International Group Analysis and Palestine: Building the Dialogue
Presentations and recording from the GA4P workshop held on 10th November
Thank you for your interest, support, and attendance at our first workshop, International Group Analysis & Palestine: Building the Dialogue, held on 10th November 2024.
Please find below the link to the recording of the event.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym6NX-eumfY&t=505s
Also available on the GA4P website:https://www.alloneworld.org/group-analysts-for-palestine/
Gaza Will Haunt You Forever!
Lynne Segal
“Gaza will haunt you forever”, is a meme now appearing on twitter and as graffiti across walls in many parts of the world. How I hope this is true, in the ever more catastrophic situation for Palestinians, as the murderous ethnocide against them continues. We have now witnessed over twelve long months of genocidal assault on Gaza, which now exceeds the horror of all bombardments in recent times: more civilians killed as they fled from one place to another; more children murdered, now in their tens of thousands; more destruction of all basic infrastructures, schools, universities, hospitals, housing all flattened; nurses, doctors, journalists, even UN workers, deliberately targeted. Committing every possible war crime, we know that Israel has been blocking even basic food supplies to civilians in Gaza, with s preventing food those left alive in Gaza largely starving, often even deprived of clean water. As we know, this barbaric assault, followed the murderous attack of Hamas in Southern Israel on October 7, with over one thousand brutally killed and hundreds of people kidnapped as hostages. But I don’t need to tell you about this.
Although altogether incomparable, this agonizing moment for Palestinians is, for me, also a tragic time for Jewish people. This is not just because Israel’s monstrous aggression must in the end shorten the long-term existence of that country, now at war with the world, apart from the complicity evident from current government leaders in the USA and UK. Nor is it just because of the dangers of historic &and continuing antisemitism, today rising and falling with the extremities of conflict in Israel/Palestine. No, what I mourn is the almost unbearable grief of thousands of Jews, observant and secular, who have like me worked for decades for peace and justice for Palestinians: that is an end to occupation of and perpetualland grabs of what remains of Palestinian territory. We know Palestinian oppression has continued ever since the Nakba, when 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly dispossessed of their homes and sent into exile to enable the establishment of Israel as a Jewish homeland in 1948. Yet, though we hear little about it, Jewish criticisms of Israel’s dispossession of the Palestinian people have always existed, but they tend to be immediately dismissed to allow only one narrative to be heard in Western culture, that of the Holocaust and antisemitism.
No-one addressed this dismissal better than Edward Said, who spoke often of the inexpressible horror of Hitler’s genocide of European Jewry, while also knowing that we can only seriously address the politics of Israel/Palestine by recognizing the historic suffering of both Jewish and Palestinian people: a recognition that insults neither Jewish memory of Hitler’s Holocaust nor that of Arab dispossession by incoming Jews.
Yet this so rarely happens. What we have instead is the shocking misuse of Holocaust memory, as every Western child is taught the horrors of the Holocaust, through books, films, music, Jewish museums, all referencing the Nazi killing centres, correctly reiterating the menace of antisemitism. Yet, these children almost never hear that other narrative of Arab dispossession in historic Palestine, following the huge influx of Jews in the early to mid-20th century. It is a migration still encouraged today, resulting in the catastrophe that has emerged, day in & day out, for Palestine’s actual inhabitants, its Arab population. That remains silenced, almost a taboo topic in Western cultural life media.
From afar, Jewish supporters working for peace and justice in Palestine have watched Israel’s ruthless, seemingly interminable, imposition of military force to deny Palestinian civil rights, and to defend the expansion of Jewish settlements onto Palestinian land, together with the constant uprooting and erasure of Bedouin villages in the Negev desert, now accompanying the virtual imprisonment and ongoing blockade and siege of Gaza ever since 2007. The latter has entailed almost two decades that have turned Gaza, as many say, into the biggest outdoor prison in the world – one where even clean water, let alone medicine or other necessities, were always scarce. Nevertheless, even Israel’s harshest critics, never quite anticipated the genocidal violence we are now witnessing.
This is why I have been joining Jews, now in their thousands, marching for a ceasefire and for peace and justice for Palestinians within the Jewish Bloc every few weeks for over a year now.
However, I have a far longer engagement with opposition to Israel’s colonial oppression. Happily, for me, I was born into an Australian Jewish family, and remain proud of their long anti-Zionist legacy, reaching back to t 1880s. As the editor of Australia’s only Jewish paper The Hebrew Standard from the close of the 19th century, my maternal grandfather Alfred Harris was increasingly embroiled in a battle over Zionism, along with his friend and adviser, Sir Isaac Isaacs (the very first, and for decades afterwards, only Australian-born Governor General, in 1931) plus the leading Australian Rabbi of the 1930s, Francis Cohen. They shared and promoted held views that were then quite common amongst many prominent European Jews. They were all highly critical of the World Zionist Organization, which had been set up at the during the First Zionist Congress, in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897, seeing it, correctly, as a product, but and another very dangerous product, of Western antisemitism.
These early critics of political Zionism did not want to create a homeland for the Jews in historic Palestine but wanted instead to fight to defend the right of Jews to live free from persecution in their European homelands, where they had lived for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. They all expressed deep concern about the rights of the overwhelmingly Arab population of Palestine were a Jewish state to be imposed on that land where Arabs had resided for fourteen centuries. To ensure justice for all who lived in historic Palestine, my grandfather backed the formation of an independent Palestinian state, insisting that Zionism was “unjust, dangerous to a degree, even cruel in its inevitable consequences and, after all, unattainable”.[1] All too soon, he was proved wrong, but only on that final – crucial – point. Tragically, everything else he predicted came to fruition. I have remained true to that cultural heritage, although all too soon my grandfather’s my grandfather’s anti-Zionist milieu, sadly, would become increasingly obsolete, as Australian Jewry overall became ever more Zionist after the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.
It was always racism, rationalized through religion, that works to uphold colonial plunder. This was brutally evident in supposedly “Christian” conquests of the lands invaded and fought over by Western powers in earlier times. These same processes were and still are at work in the chronic dehumanization of Palestinians that has always pervaded Israeli society. Indeed, in Israel, a form of colonial racism was even evident in the treatment of darker-skinned Arab or Mizrahi Jews. As Avi Shlaim and others document, Mizrahi Jews were made to feel inferior and faced humiliation from the dominant Ashkenazi establishment.[2]
There have been many explorations of the complex growth of political Zionism. Its founder, Theodor Herzl’s adulation of tough Jewish manhood has itself been described as an internalization of Aryan, antisemitic culture. Their emphasis on a white, muscular nationhood clearly incorporated Western racist supremacy in the denigration of Arab people as intrinsically inferior. It was this sense of racial superiority that served to rationalize the Nakba. It was his knowledge of Israel’s ethnic dispossession and subsequent apartheid policies towards the Arabs that lay behind Mandela now famously declaring, two yrs after dismantling apartheid in South Africa, that this was not enough: “we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” It is fitting that today it is South Africa that has taken Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which subsequently decided that there is a plausible risk that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
In the meantime, for around 25 years, I have worked with almost every anti-Zionist Jewish group I could find to campaign for peace and justice for Palestinians, beginning with the group ‘Jews 4 Justice for Palestinians’ formed in London 2001. There have been many other campaigns and groups ever since, the most recent one, the Jewish Voice for Labour. With my friends and Jewish comrades, we face ever more maddening times, knowing that to date all our efforts have been vain. Indeed, they have dramatically worsened. With Israel’s reckless bombing of anything and everything in Gaza, along with their ongoing prevention of provision of food, water and medicines in that wrecked region, there is now no doubt at all that we are witnessing massive war crimes and genocidal practices.
Most people I know are suffering, often sleepless, witnessing the ceaseless annihilation of Gaza and its accompanying human devastation. Thus, there is little personal conflict for me, as a Jew, just immense misery and anger toward Western complicity with Israel’s murderous invasion, beginning with the USA, and the leadership of the political party I have yet to be thrown out of, the British Labour Party. Both, iniquitously, continue to send weapons and support to Israel, while refusing to call for a permanent ceasefire or an end to occupation. Meanwhile we are surrounded by the distortions of most of the Western media, endlessly biased towards Israel, rarely allowing a Palestinian voice to be heard.
Tiny rays of hope emerge only from the unprecedented, expanding support for Palestinian resistance overall. Our solidarity with Palestinian struggle and suffering only occasionally manages to surmount media subservience to Israeli propaganda, in the completely spurious name of antisemitism. It is hard not to feel completely helpless, even as we redouble our efforts calling for a ceasefire and end to occupation, while sending whatever support we can to Gaza and other Palestinians facing the intensifying settler violence in the West Bank.
We know the only route to the end of such violence is when Israel moves towards respect and redress for Palestinians. Not endless killing, but only some vision of equality and an end to occupation can enable political freedom and justice to flourish. Tragically, I fear this outcome is unlikely in my lifetime. But we can only keep working for such a vision together, with a solidarity strong and loving enough to overcome our differences and to soften the blows of all who traduce us.
I often recall John Berger’s powerful summary of his impressions visiting Palestine, now decades ago. Surrounded by rubble on all sides, including ‘the rubble of words’, he found what he called an ‘undefeated despair’ amongst many the Palestinians he met. This, despite all Palestinians have suffered over those years, though never quite as terrifying as now.[3] Overcoming that rubble of words is where I hope Group Psychoanalysis might be most helpful. As I write in my latest bk Lean on Me, we need to begin from knowing that in reality all of us are vulnerable, and we are all dependent each on one another, and also on the world we inhabit.[4] Hence, we are all interconnected, not just locally, but internationally. And globally. It means I can only keep hoping that we continue together with some vision of peace and of reconciliation in Israel/Palestine, however difficult, even unreachable, that now feels. Indeed, more than ever after the disaster of the recent US election, with Donald Trump’s unwavering commitment to Netanyahu and his unqualified support for Israel’s annexations and continuing war crimes, I truly believe this is the only hope for a sustainable world for any of us right now.
[1] Suzanne D. Rutland, Pages of History: A Century of the Australian Jewish Press, Sydney, Australian Jewish Press, Ltd, 1995, pp.29
[2] Avi Shlaim, Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew, London, OneWorld, 2023
[3] John Berger, ‘Undefeated despair’, Open Democracy, 13 January 2006.
[4] Lynne Segal, Lean on Me: A Politics of Radical Care, <London, Verso, 2023.
Lynne Segal is an Australian-born, British-based socialist feminist academic and activist, author of many books; including most recently Radical Happiness: Moments of Radical Joy (Verso 2017) Lean on me: A Politics of Radical Care (Verso 2023), and participant in many campaigns, from local community to international. She has taught in higher education in London, England since 1970, at Middlesex Polytechnic from 1973. She is professor emerita of psychosocial studies at Birkbeck, University of London, where she had been based since 1999 as Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies.
‘We Refuse to be Enemies.’ How to be Steadfast in the Face of Threat
Dr Christine van Duuren
Daily we are confronted with news about unspeakable atrocities being committed by Israel around the Middle East. What tends to receive less attention is the decades of corrosive undermining of Palestinian life and this is what I would like to address today.
My husband and I recently returned from a three week stay as volunteers at a Palestinian hilltop farm near Bethlehem in the West Bank, called the Tent of Nations. Prior to this trip I considered myself well informed but I cannot highlight enough what a difference it makes to experience in person what goes on and how this impacts on local people.
Time does not permit me to describe all the obstacles the Nassar family, the farm’s owners, face, but they are constant. I’ll highlight only a few of them: Access to running water is prohibited by the occupying authorities. I will leave it to your imagination what it means to run a farm just using rainwater when most of the year there is no rain. The other obstacles I’ll mention here are of a legal nature, within a sham legal system run by military courts that impose Kafka-esque obstacles. 33 years of trying to prove the ownership of the land (without which it would ultimately be lost), 14 court cases fighting demolition orders, fighting illegal structures built on the land by illegal settlers. And so on. Earlier this year a caravan was placed right next to the farm boundary, on land that neighbouring owners had been forced to vacate. These days settlers gather around the caravan, which, as you can imagine, is intimidating. The situation leads to an ever-present tension, always living with uncertainty about what will be thrown at you next. While this becomes (in quotes) ‘normal’, it is destructive to the soul and can lead to wrong decisions.
The family are constantly up against lawless settlers, who are supported by and integrated into the occupying military machinery. There are many ways in which the state, the army and the settlers justify the actions that make life near-unbearable for farmers and others around the West Bank. One of them is their dehumanisation of Palestinians. My experience with Palestinians over the years is that they are far from inhuman -and inhumane- and I feel passionate about rectifying this deliberately biased portrayal. What I want to emphasise is that the spirit of peaceful, purposeful resistance is alive and well.
My focus today is on trying to understand what drives Palestinians to persist in their principled struggle for justice, and to unpack the concept of Sumud, using the Nassar family as an example. In brief, their motto is: To refuse to give up, to refuse to be enemies and to refuse to adopt a victim mentality. They seek legal and peaceful ways in their utterly inspiring fight for justice. I learnt so much during my stay with them and will forever feel grateful.
The family are the personification of the Palestinian concept of sumud, sometimes translated as ‘steadfastness’, meaning a determination to stay on and fight for their land as a collective value.
The main representative and organiser in the family is Daoud. One of his many striking attributes is the sense of togetherness he conveys. You hear it in is words, and you feel it when you are there. The abiding memory of my stay at the farm is a unified sense of working towards a massively worthwhile goal that was invigorating for us all.
I was continuously struck by the family’s generosity in spite of their on-going corrosive experience. When I commented on that to Daoud, he replied that he gets a lot out of giving. “When I receive something, I want to give something back.” I replied to him that his capacity for gratitude is tangible. I believe that this contributes to the family’s resourcefulness.
Their Inclusive approach has enabled the family to create an international awareness of the difficulties the farm is facing, resulting in wide-ranging foreign support, from individuals and communities connected with churches, from politicians and interested others. In two countries activists have formed a ‘Friends of the Tent of Nations’. In spite of the current increased danger and the cancellation of flights to Israel, new volunteers keep coming to the farm.
One of the main tasks of the volunteers is to provide a protective presence that is intended to limit destructive incursions by settlers. This doesn’t always work but thankfully this year’s olive harvest proceeded unhindered, in contrast to neighbouring farms.
The Nassars are a large family but only a relatively small number are actively involved in the running of the farm. These have organically come to complement each other in terms of the roles they have adopted and the skills they bring to bear. And when one of them loses heart, the others are there to remind them of the importance of their mission and the need not to give up. With their mutual commitment they are a formidable force.
I marvel at how much the family manage to contain without retaliating, how much anxiety they can bear without becoming paranoid. What is it like when you know that so many of the problems are there because others have deliberately, sadistically and contemptuously put them in your path? It would be so easy to slide into a paranoid state or else either into a state of manic omnipotence or of learnt helplessness.
What does it take to be this resilient? What resources do they draw on?
The family’s Lutheran faith provides an important source of strength and love. Jesus said: Meet evil with good, darkness with light and hatred with love. Daoud feels passionately that “All things will be alright for people who trust in God. Ultimately”. But the family don’t wait for God to intervene. They do everything in their own power to achieve their aims. They have God and love inside them.
As a non-believer, I asked the question, how could a loving God allow so much pain and injustice? Yes, was the answer, sometimes they have doubts. “Why is this happening to us?” “Is God abandoning us? Us who don’t hate, who seek justice”. “But no”, Daoud explains in his heartfelt way, “He isn’t leaving us. Things happen for a reason. Following from destruction good things will happen. We share our fate with many people in this world. Our struggles become a blessing for others, they create hope.”
The presence of volunteers provides confirmation for the family that their efforts matter to people from all over the world. Their supportive, encouraging presence conveys that the struggle is important. The farm is important. Justice is important.
But take nothing away from the family’s internal resources.
First of all, perseverance. It took 12 years to convince the first two volunteers to come and stay. Quote “Many times we failed.” “We have no expectation of success, of support, of justice. We always keep sight of the ultimate goal. Today is a piece in a bigger puzzle.“ For those of you with an interest in psychoanalysis, this is an example Freud’s reality principle as opposed to pleasure principle.
Daher, Daoud’s brother, once said: ‘One day you get honey, another onions’, indicating that he was prepared to accept the onions forced upon him and to respond accordingly. Even though he, along with other Palestinians, has little control over the treatment he receives at the hands of the military occupation and illegal settlers, he has the autonomy to choose a dignified response. I believe that remaining in charge of their own autonomous minds is essential in fostering an internal equilibrium and sanity. In addition, it refutes the projections by the occupier, maintaining a sense of their culture, dignity and resilience. Furthermore, I think that the way he, as the rest of the family, practices his faith adds to their sense of agency and counters any sense of helplessness that they must intermittently experience.
The family’s approach to life is consistent with their convictions, not just words, and in facing their challenges they passionately put their deeply held values into practice. They are explicit that they are not going to hate and that they are not going to be provoked into violence. Their refusal to respond to provocation means that they don’t provide any justification for an escalation of violence. On the contrary, they are the personification of compassion in the face of aggression. They can take pride in their stance. This does not make them passive, since it is helpfully mixed with a dose of obstinate realism.
All this doesn’t mean that they are not despondent or angry at times and that they don’t experience doubts. Sometimes they feel in a lonely place. But, as Daoud once said, “The train of giving up has left the station.” When angry, they channel this into planting new trees. When depressed they remind themselves of the ultimate goal. I do fear that there are times when this requires them to be in tight control of their internal world, perhaps including a little -necessary- manic functioning.
But … they have no choice but to persist.
First of all, there is so much at stake. Failing would mean the heart-breaking experience of losing their cherished land, the land that their family have owned since Ottoman times. This is the farm where they were born and grew up. This is the land that they get strength from, that is bound up with their identity. These are the trees and the vines they love. Daher once pointed out in his heartfelt way that the farm represents his very soul. And they would not just lose it but lose it to those who have inflicted their ordeal. It would mean that all their struggles, all their sacrifices would have been in vain. It would mean that they failed in their self-assumed responsibility not just to themselves, but also to their neighbours, to Palestinians in general and to a worldwide struggle for justice. It would mean letting cruel injustice prevail.
A collective sense of Sumud is hard to achieve at the moment. There is no genuine leadership that offers overarching support. Palestinians practice sumud in their own way. However, the knowledge that doctors in Gaza keep treating patients, that teachers keep teaching, farmers keep farming, that people whose house is demolished stay on their landin a tent, that collective effort is crucially important for the continuation of this very just struggle.
On the way back to the airport, seeing the omnipresent Israeli flags proclaiming Israel’s right to maintain their apartheid state in Palestine grated even more than usual and the self-congratulatory posters in the airport only added to that feeling. In the face of that entitled display of power, I’m sorry Daoud, I felt rage.
I will not allow my anger to turn into violence but I do call on everybody to take a stance against the cruel Israeli apartheid regime and to support the Tent of Nations, and all the Palestinians it represents.
Dr Christine van Duuren is a retired psychoanalytic psychotherapist. She is a member of the Steering Group of the UK Palestine Mental Health Network and is part of the Psychoanalytic Voices for Palestine. She has been to the Middle East a number of times, starting with a year as a general practitioner in Palestinian refugee camps in Southern Lebanon in 1981/82. Recently she worked as a volunteer at a family farm near Bethlehem, called the Tent of Nations.