Avigail Abarbanel : Taking Responsibility: Who is Accountable in the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict?

This is the text of a talk I gave at the Spirituality in the Pub forum held at the Southern Cross Club in Philip (Canberra) on the evening of Wednesday, 26th March, 2003. I gave a slightly shorter version of this talk at an AJPPP/Greens forum held in the Haydon-Allen Lecture Theatre at the Australian National University on Thursday 20th March 2003. (April 2003)

I see the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians mainly through the lens of trauma psychology. My perspective comes both from my experience as an Israeli and as a psychotherapist. Living in Israel I experienced the effects of trauma first hand, and as a psychotherapist I work a lot with traumatised people. To look at the conflict this way is somewhat unusual. This is an angle that is not so commonly expressed probably for two reasons. One is that the observers, analysts and commentators are not usually familiar with the area of trauma psychology. The second reason is that to talk about trauma in relation to the Middle East conflict it is necessary to mention the Holocaust and the long history of Jewish persecution. This topic seems to be still highly charged and sensitive among Jews and Israelis and somewhat of a taboo among non-Jews who are afraid to be seen as antisemites.

Whose Responsibility Is It?

The idea of responsibility is central to my work as a psychotherapist. In fact psychotherapy can be seen as a process by which people learn to take more and more responsibility for themselves, for their history, their injuries, their emotions, desires, beliefs, thoughts, actions, and for the way they understand their circumstances. It can be very difficult to help a client who is preoccupied with blaming others and who refuses to move on from blaming to taking responsibility. The ability to take responsibility is part of what constitutes emotional health and maturity. It is also what enables people to transcend and resolve conflicts and participate in healthy and loving relationships.

In our society we expect mature healthy adults to be able to take responsibility for their actions. Not many judges would accept excuses such as "He made me do it" or "I was only following orders" from an adult. We expect people to exercise independent thinking and judgement, and be conscious of the consequences of their actions.

Since I started to write and speak about the Palestinian Israeli conflict what I have been trying to do is encourage Israel to take responsibility for its own contribution to the situation. Much of the angry mail that I receive from Israelis and Jewish people from around the world suggests that it is the Palestinians who should take responsibility for their actions. My critics are convinced that Israel has done nothing wrong. I am often criticised for being one-sided, for seeing the suffering of the Palestinians but not of Israelis.

I was trained systemically in therapy. From a systemic perspective all parties involved in a situation participate in it in some way. Conflicts (whether they are between a couple, in a family or a group, or between nations) can be resolved in a meaningful and deep way only when each of the parties involved is able to take responsibility for their own contribution. From this perspective perpetrators are required to take responsibility for their crimes and victims, for their healing.

When I work with a couple or a family I am an objective outsider. As such I have the right to ask all parties to take responsibility. In this conflict I am not an independent observer but a member of one of the groups involved. As a Jew and as a former Israeli I feel that it is my duty to encourage my people to take responsibility. I do not believe that it is my place to tell the Palestinians what to do.

When people are victims of persecution, crime or any other violation or injury their responsibility consists of owning up to their victimhood. This means that wounded people need to acknowledge fully what happened to them, they need to allow themselves to feel all the feelings associated with the trauma, such as pain, fear, shock, anger or helplessness. When a process like this is experienced in a safe and supportive environment, and in the presence of an emotionally skilled individual, it inevitably helps the wounded person to heal. Healing means re-discovering one's identity after the trauma. The new identity has to integrate the painful event but it is not defined by it. This is important because traumatised people tend to re-organise their whole identity around their trauma. For some the the traumatic experience becomes their identity.

After Germany's defeat in the first World War the German author Herman Hesse said to his own people:

Ours is the role and the task of the vanquished. The task is the sacred and immemorial task of all the unfortunate on earth: not only to bear our lot but to assume it completely, to make ourselves one with it, to understand it - until our misfortune is no longer felt to be an alien fate, hailed down upon us from distant clouds, but becomes part and parcel of ourselves, permeating our being and guiding our thoughts.[1]

From the moment an injury is inflicted its effects become the responsibility of the wounded. Herman Hesse saw healing as sacred because he knew that it is essential to heal in order to live a full life and in order not to pass on the injury to others.

The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians stems first and foremost from Israel's failure to help its people heal from Jewish trauma, and in particular from the Holocaust. Instead of owning up to Jewish victimhood and thus facilitating healing, what Israel has done is to distance itself as much as possible from the identity of the Jew as a victim of persecution. Even before the Holocaust the Zionist movement was committed to the idea of creating a 'new Jew', a strong, capable Jew with a sense of national pride who is a skilled fighter and who is able to protect himself against any enemy, the kind of Jew that will not allow himself go like a lamb to the slaughter, the complete opposite of the 'old Jew' who was seen as pale, weak and pathetic with no pride and no self protective skills.

Unfortunately, while common among victims of trauma, the strategy of trying to simply move on and distance oneself from the wounded identity does not work. Wounds that are being avoided inevitably continue to dominate the life of victims in every respect, whether they are aware of it or not. Until one heals, life is lived always in reaction to the trauma.

Trauma can make people untrusting, cynical, hyper-vigilant, chronically anxious, rigid, aggressive and controlling, arrogant and critical. Traumatised people can also be extremely emotionally reactive and will often have a tendency to personalise everything and behave in a defensive way. Trauma causes people to focus mostly on what is negative in life. They tend to 'catastrophise' that is, anticipate that things will always go horribly wrong. It is impossible to thrive as a full human being after a trauma without healing. To the non-traumatised observer the traumatised individual can appear confusing. This is because traumatised people can function extremely well in some areas of their lives and can appear very confident and successful, compassionate and helpful. It is only when one gets closer that inconsistencies can become apparent. (You may know someone like that in your own life.)

Israelis have focused on making themselves so strong that they could not be persecuted any more. But since most of them have never dealt with the effects of Jewish trauma, they are still heavily dominated by fear and anxiety. This is despite the fact that Israel is such a powerful country.

People who have been traumatised and have avoided their trauma live in a private hell, the kind of which could only be understood by another traumatised individual. I have come from such a hell myself.

Whether or not we are conscious of them our philosophy of life, our beliefs and values will always guide our behaviour. When the philosophy is negative and untrusting as in the case of trauma, one tends to see enemies everywhere and perceive the world as predominantly a dangerous and inhospitable place. The world is not all safe and positive but it is also not all negative. It is a combination of both and healthy people can see this clearly.

Quite often traumatised people create a self-fulfilling prophecy in their lives. Because they expect things to go wrong they often behave in such a way as to invite negative circumstances or responses. When these happen they of course only serve to reinforce the view in the person's mind that the world is bad to them and so the cycle continues. This is the story of Zionism and of Israel.

Destructive Entitlement

One of the most dangerous outcomes of trauma is what family therapists call 'destructive entitlement'. This means acting as if because one was hurt, one then has a right to hurt others. This is similar and related to revenge, but whilst revenge can be a conscious choice, destructive entitlement often is not. Another difference between revenge and destructive entitlement is that revenge is often directed at the original offender whilst destructive entitlement can be directed at anyone who happens to be weaker or more vulnerable. In family therapy this is seen from a multi-generational perspective. For instance a woman who was mistreated in childhood by a parent might later act in a similar way toward her own children. The original aggressor may not be available or may be too powerful for direct revenge.

There is an example in Israeli history that demonstrates well the dynamic of destructive entitlement. In July and August 1982 the Israeli army attacked the city of Beirut in Lebanon. This campaign was directed against the PLO but it inflicted immense suffering and heavy casualties on the Palestinian population of Beirut. As the siege was intensified, the methods used by the Israeli army were criticised within the army itself, in Israel and internationally. When the US President Ronald Reagan finally lost his patience and joined the criticism, Menahem Begin, Israel's Prime Minister at the time, sent him the following message:

Now may I tell you, dear Mr President, how I feel these days when I turn to the creator of my soul in deep gratitude. I feel as a Prime Minister empowered to instruct a valiant army facing "Berlin" where amongst innocent civilians, Hitler and his henchmen hide in a bunker deep beneath the surface. My generation, dear Ron, swore on the altar of God that whoever proclaims his intent to destroy the Jewish state or the Jewish people, or both, seals his fate, so that which happened once on instructions from Berlin -- with or without inverted commas -- will never happen again.

In response to that the Israeli author Amos Oz sent a message to Begin saying:

This urge to revive Hitler, only to kill him again and again, is the result of pain that poets can permit themselves to use, but not statesmen ... even at great emotional cost personally, you must remind yourself and the public that elected you its leader that Hitler is dead and burned to ashes.[2]

Amos Oz was right but just telling people doesn't work. I also do not think that this kind of phenomenon was unique to Begin. I believe that where we see Arafat an old, sick and almost defeated leader of a persecuted and dispossessed people, the majority of Israelis and their leaders see Hitler. Where we see Palestinian children throwing stones at tanks, Israelis see Nazi soldiers. From 1968 on the PLO called for an end to the Zionist regime and the establishment of a democratic, secular non-sectarian state for Jews, Muslims and Christians. Israelis have interpreted that as a call for the destruction of Israel and it is easy to see how well this fitted into the collective trauma and how it served to reinforce it. To this day Israelis are not yet able to get over their fear that what they are dealing with is a threat to their very survival. Growing up in Israel I myself viewed Arafat as the devil himself and Al Fatah and the PLO as his instruments. It is hard to convey these feelings to non Israelis. I learnt to feel that way from my parents and from the way events were presented in the media.

Jewish history convinced the early Zionists that Jews cannot ever be safe living among and with non-Jews. Their solution was to create a Jewish-only state where Jews could live together without fear of being harassed or persecuted. This was a reasonable conclusion to draw after 2000 years of institutionalised antisemitism largely fostered and promoted by Christianity. To this day most Israelis believe that the only safe place for Jews is in Israel. To Jews living outside it, Israel is a kind of an insurance policy, a place to run to when the Nazis come back. One of my Israeli critics wrote to me recently, "Should you and others like you who hate Israel and Israelis...ever need a haven (note the growing antisemitism around the world), we who have maintained this country will welcome you with compassion."

Viewed from Jewish perspective the rationale for a Jewish-only state is understandable but it is the fact that such a state came at the expense of the indigenous non-Jewish population of Palestine that is at the root of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. When the Zionist movement set its eyes on the land of Palestine as the future Jewish homeland it was fully aware that there was a large non-Jewish population living on that land. The intention was to find a way to transfer these people somewhere else, and clear the way to a Jewish-only state.

This to me is an example of destructive entitlement. We have suffered so therefore we have the right to do whatever we have to do to save ourselves. If this happens to hurt someone else, well, tough. (The official justification that the early Zionists gave to themselves was that since these people were only peasants they wouldn't mind where they lived...)

Sure enough there were many debates and disagreements along the way, some even on moral grounds, but when I look at the history of Israel the path that was almost always chosen was the aggressive one.

As for the Palestinian people, they obviously were not happy when the Jewish settlements in Palestine began to grow. They began to understand that they were going to lose the land on which they lived for thousands of years. At first some Palestinians sold land to Jewish settlers but when the Palestinian population stopped selling the land the Jewish settlers simply began to take it using the strategy of creating 'facts on the ground'. That is by setting up settlements over night and then defending them with force from angry Palestinians. The stories of these early settlements are being told in history classes in Israel as stories of heroism. There is never any mention of the possibility that they were in fact illegal and were set up in an aggressive and expansionist manner.

Unfortunately but understandably, the Palestinian population did fight against the Jewish settlers and did commit atrocities along the way. Such incidents only served to confirm their image as enemies of the Jews. By that stage the Palestinian population was beginning to be viewed as yet another persecutor of the Jews and by the 1920's their image as antisemites was already established. It is important to note that Jews and Muslims lived together for thousands of years in Palestine in harmony. The many stories that testify to that history are all but forgotten. It is also interesting that genetically, Palestinians and Israeli Jews are in fact part of the same family tree.

In the version of history taught in Israel every single event is seen through the eyes of Jewish trauma. Any evidence of friendship and loyalty between Arabs and Jews is suppressed and stories where Arab neighbours helped Jews are not part of Israeli history books. A Zionist act that we might consider aggressive is seen from an Israeli perspective as heroic and justified. Critics inside and outside Israel (including Jews like myself) are immediately labelled antisemites and Israel-haters if they suggest otherwise. For example, the Palestinians are seen as terrorists but Jewish terrorists who fought against the British and the Arab population between the two world wars are still seen in Israel as heroic freedom fighters. Having been indoctrinated in Israel it came as a shock to me to see that British newspapers from the 1930's referred to my noble Jewish freedom fighters as terrorists.

In the war of 1948, which Israel refers to as the 'War of Independence' and the Palestinians as 'The Disaster', many Palestinians were massacred and many driven out. Many villages were destroyed partly to drive out their population and partly to discourage them from coming back. The Palestinians who did not leave Israel were invited to remain as citizens of Israel but they were never treated as equal and it has always been an uneasy co-existence. Discrimination against them existed at subtle and not so subtle levels and they have always been the target of racial intolerance. They are not allowed to serve in the Israeli army for fear that they cannot be trusted and this is a significant point because serving in the army is compulsory in Israel, and it forms an essential part of Israeli identity.

Many of those who escaped Palestine never saw their homes again. Families were split and those who left had to find places in countries like Jordan who did not always welcome the refugees. Since 1967 and until the first Intifada, Israel has exploited the Palestinians as a slave labour force without any legal protection, in humiliating conditions and wages below the Israeli minimum wage. I have no doubt in my mind that this helped to intensify Palestinian resentment against Israel. Israel has kept the Palestinians under military rule with no rights and none of the basic freedoms offered to Israeli citizens. Israel is repeatedly using collective punishment such as the demolition of family homes, imprisonment and torture and keeping the Palestinian population in a state of permanent anxiety and uncertainty. There is no doubt in my mind that by now the Palestinians too are suffering from their share of trauma.

So Who Needs to Take Responsibility Now?

If I were an objective observer in this conflict I would suggest that there are a number of groups that need to take responsibility.

In order to see an end to this conflict Israel has to take responsibility for its treatment of the Palestinians at least since 1948 if not earlier. This means that the Israeli public has to be openly educated on a proper version of history. It is hard to expect Israelis to question their government's actions when they do not know the truth.
Israel must acknowledge its crimes against the Palestinians and move to make amends in the form of compensation and a right of return to all Palestinians.
Israel must stop immediately all acts of aggression against the Palestinian people, and must stop illegal settlements. Illegal settlements in Palestinian territories must be dismantled.
Israel has to take responsibility to create a national scale program to explore and heal from past traumas.
Palestinian mental health professionals, teachers and the Palestinian leadership need to begin to consider the need for the emotional healing of their people. However, we must realise that their healing cannot begin while they are still being persecuted.
The US and all other Western countries need to intervene on behalf of the Palestinian people and order Israel to cease its brutality against them.
Britain must apologise to the Palestinians and the Israelis (as well as the people of all its former colonies) for the mess it left behind when the colonies were abandoned.
All nations are responsible to educate their people against racism, antisemitism and all forms of tribalism and xenophobia. Jews and anyone who is the target of racism deserve to feel safe in this world. There have been positive steps towards this in many countries in the last 50 years. However, it seems to me that with the push for a war against Iraq we are moving backwards, as an 'us and them' mentality is being strongly and dangerously promoted by our leadership.
The Christian world was instrumental in promoting and practising anti-Jewish attitudes throughout its history. Since the 1960's however, all major denominations have taken responsibility for this and have changed their liturgy to remove all references that promote or lead to anti-Jewish sentiments or actions.
In general, world leaders and all of us are responsible to prevent any action that can inflict trauma on individuals and groups. This includes all forms of economic exploitation and inequality, war, persecution and acts of violence and abuse against children and women or anyone else who is vulnerable. Because trauma begets trauma, as I explained in the case of Israel and the Palestinians, in order to stop the cycle of abuse and persecution we must stop inflicting new trauma.

Footnotes

1. Hesse, H. 'The Path of Love'. Dec. 1918, in Hesse, H. If The War Goes On. pp. 66-70

2. Shlaim, A. The Iron Wall; Israel and the Arab World. pp. 410-411

Page content last modified: 3 Jul 2003