Obstacles on Israel’s Path From Trauma and Victimhood to Accountability
In this paper I will bring both a professional and a personal view of the psychological dynamics and repercussions of the Israel-Palestine conflict and Israel’s occupation of Palestine. This is a revised version of a paper first read in Berlin in 2019 at the Berliner Institut für Gruppenanalyse[1].
Speaking at the time before the Berlin institute was in no way a coincidence; the 5th Israeli-German group analytic conference was about to take place for the first time in Germany, in Berlin, after 4 such conferences in Israel, all under the name Voices after Auschwitz. As the invitation to these conferences stated: For many of us, descendants of victims and perpetrators, the shoah’s impact is still present. Our aim is to face the anguish which still moves us… Engaging with our transgenerational heritage we may encounter our parents’ and grandparents’ suffering, violence and unspeakable feelings in a more human way… We have already found that this shared effort to cope with our delegations facilitates thinking and taking responsibility for our own destinies.[2] I was asked by a colleague from Berlin to come and support the small minority of local GASi members who opposed this specific group work.
Why oppose such important group work? Because of those who are not invited, the victim’s victim, the Palestinians. I wanted to ask my German colleagues to realize that by taking upon themselves the sole responsibility of representing perpetrators, they are keeping the Israelis safe from the psychic danger of exploring our own violence and accountability.
Consciousness and Unconsciousness in the Political Sphere
Israelis have been exposed to a variety of trauma-evoking experiences since the establishment of their state; at the same time, Israel’s very existence created, and continues to evoke, traumatic experiences for the Palestinians. Somehow, this combination has placed immense psychological obstacles on Israel’s path to any political change that could further non-violent solutions to the conflict.
What are the conscious psychological obstacles? For Israeli Jews, fear of annihilation seems like air – we do not have to touch or measure it to know it is there. We consciously know that we do not feel fully safe because of the violence directed against us by Palestinians, because we are threatened by surrounding hostile countries, because of antisemitism.
And what might the unconscious psychological obstacles be? As a psychoanalyst and group therapist, I find analytic theory somewhat helpful in answering this question. For example, one might describe the Israelis as having internalized their group self-identity as fearful victims, while projecting aggressive aspects unto their objects – mainly their Palestinian neighbors.
This rigid one-dimensional perspective continually blocks out other, more complex components of Israeli identity. Thus, Israelis feel morally and politically entitled to almost any action that can be perceived as self-protection.
Entitlement is quite a useful defense mechanism. It enables Israel to consciously defend itself from any outside danger by using any means available. However, as defense mechanisms go, there is a price to pay. Aspects of reality that stem from other viewpoints cannot be acknowledged, and so Israeli society encloses itself in a one-dimensional world, where it interacts only with specific aspects of its Other. In this case, Israelis search for and notice only violent and threatening aspects of the Palestinians. Thus, they are also unconsciously defending themselves from owning up to their own aggression. I suggest that because of these unconscious processes, Israelis cannot conceive of themselves as perpetrators. Guilt, which one might have assumed to accompany their own political violence, is completely missing from the picture.
In a side note, I will dare say that the same might be said of the Palestinians, who as well tend to define themselves through their victimhood. To be sure, I am not equating the power status of Israel vs. Palestine, I am describing a psychological parallel. Both sides keep on paying a heavy price, not only because of the other party’s violence, but also because of their reluctance to shoulder responsibility for the suffering each inflicts on the other side. These defense mechanisms are quite successful in preserving each group’s positive self-identity, enabling leaders and members of each nation to conduct violent acts against vulnerable civilians of the other side, while perceiving themselves as justified and moral.
The Psychotherapeutic Professional Community
I would like to look a bit more in depth at what happens in the Israeli professional mental health community. Unfortunately, even in the analytic environment, we are not free of these defense mechanisms. As far as I can see, Israeli psychoanalysts are prone to the same extreme one-dimensional identifications as the rest of their society.
Many, if not all, Israeli organizations of individual and group psychoanalysis and psychotherapy are particularly careful not to engage in discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is considered both a very private and a very political subject. Bringing it up is conceived as “taking sides”, and the implication is that one cannot do this, as it delegitimizes whoever thinks differently. It is quite clear that the possibility of a transitional space, where new thoughts and links can be created, has collapsed. The unfortunate outcome is that the Israeli society is depleted of a dimension of self-reflection.
In stark contrast, this same professional community readily engages in furthering the understanding of the psychological effects of the past political violence of the Holocaust. One of the leading therapeutic institutions in the country is Amcha, with centers all over Israel; in the words of their website: Established in 1987 by a group of Holocaust survivors and devoted mental health professionals… Amcha provides a full range of psychological and social support services to Holocaust survivors and their families. Amcha continues to be a home and safe place for them to unburden their hearts and share their stories with others… Interestingly, while initial projections pointed to the expected decrease in the demand for our services, over the past years, the number of survivors turning to us continues to grow… This is explained by the fact that as the survivors’ age and face additional challenges and losses… their needs’ grow and their support network becomes more limited. These new challenges and losses are layered on challenges and losses from the Holocaust, including unresolved grief and other traumatic experiences. Security threats in Israel, as well as international terror attacks have also had devastating effects as they can easily trigger the survivor’s wartime memories (emphasis added). As can be seen, the triggers are seen as coming from the outside only.
Where else can one find this one-sided engagement by the Jewish-Israeli professional community? Time and again there have been workshops and conferences initiated by Israeli analysts with their German peers, aiming to gain insights into the psychological processes of the descendants of Jewish victims and of German perpetrators. I suggest that this has become another realm of one-dimensional interaction, where self and other have single attributes, either victim or perpetrator.
However, there have been efforts to open up spaces of introspection and shouldering responsibility. Two decades ago, several Israeli mental health professionals created the informal group called PsychoActive – Israeli Mental Health Professionals for Human Rights, based on the premise that the political and the therapeutic are mutually relevant, especially within the context of Israel and Palestine. As it says on PsychoActive’s web site: We are a group of practicing and academic mental health professionals who have set ourselves the goal of being active in areas of social-political concern, especially the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The group developed out of the members’ need to expand therapeutic discourse and practice to include the social and political contexts of our lives… with the aim of promoting social activity extending beyond the closed clinic, for the benefit of individuals and groups whose voice is presently absent from both the public domain and the professional discourse…. Much of our activity relates to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the ongoing conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, and the psychological consequences of this situation for occupied and occupier.
As you can see, the members of PsychoActive, myself included, have many good intentions. However, this is much easier said than done. After years of small projects that had no real impact on either the professional or the political environment, PsychoActive, unfortunately, is hardly active anymore. The mental health community continues to withdraw from thinking and discussing the present political violence, claiming that this is a professional stance and not realizing that this is an act contributing to the splitting of partial objects. In other words, therapists and analysts are actively supporting turning a blind eye towards the humanity of the Palestinians.
Case Studies
I would like to give two concrete examples of how the mental space collapses in powerful ways in Israeli public and psychotherapeutic spheres. I will try to show how certain contents become barred from consciousness, so that it becomes impossible to acknowledge the harmful effects of our violence.
The first example will be from the public sphere in Israel, the second example will be from my professional work as a group analyst.
1. Illustration from the Public Realm
In January 2009, more than 60,000 Israelis stood in line for several days to become bone-marrow donors for Amit Kadosh, a sweet 6-year-old Israeli girl, severely ill with leukemia. She was neither the first nor the last child to need such a donation, but such public solidarity has never been seen in Israel, before or since. How come?
Just days before, three weeks of combat between Israel and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and Israel had ended (Operation Cast Lead). More than 1,000 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed. “Breaking the Silence,” the Israeli NGO, later published testimonies from soldiers who had participated in unlawful use of firepower that caused needless deaths and destruction.
The Israeli media hardly ever covers the Gazan viewpoint, which enables Israelis to distance ourselves completely from any emotional experiencing of the outcomes of our attacks on our neighbors. However, on one of the final days of this horrendous battle, this wall blocking information cracked for several minutes on the evening TV news. Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, an infertility specialist from Gaza who had completed an Israeli medical residency and worked in Israel for years, and who had recently lost his wife to leukemia, called his friend Shlomi Eldar, a TV News correspondent. The phone call broke into the evening television news. Abuelaish’s home had just been heavily bombed by tanks, and three of his daughters were dying next to him with no help available. Abuelaish sounded on the evening news through Eldar’s speakerphone: “I want to save them. Their heads are not in place. What did we do to them? Ya rabi, ya Allah, what did we do? What’s left? What’s left? My girls! They’ve been killed.”
I suggest a direct connection between the unbearably tragic death of Bessan, Mayar, and Aya Abuelaish, and the full-scale communal initiative to save Amit Kadosh. After being exposed to the full reality caused by our “defending ourselves”, Israelis had to prove themselves – through this enactment – that they are moral, kind, and protective of the helpless. This is how guilt could be kept outside of consciousness. How sad; as acknowledgement of guilt toward this innocent Palestinian family could have contributed to some sort of accountability and responsibility, which could lead to seeing the Palestinians as more than collateral damage – i.e. as partners in negotiations for a peaceful solution. It is important to note that this split did not occur only in periods of war and combat; when Abuelaish sued for compensation, the supreme court ruled that the Israeli military was not liable for any damages, denying him compensation and an apology.
2. Illustration from Group Therapy
More than a decade ago I was invited to co-lead a therapeutic group for veteran soldiers suffering from severe PTSD. For several months we had weekly sessions with eight suffering young men, in their twenties and early thirties. They had fought either in South Lebanon in the Second Lebanon War, or in the Occupied West Bank.
From the very first session of this group, the stories told were hard to bear. Unbearable helplessness and intolerable rage, the two untiring inner demons that accompany the PTSD sufferer, kept coming to light. From their vulnerable position, each participant made sincere efforts to share the traumatic experiences from his recent past – of having survived combat and death of peers, and of having been injured and hospitalized for long and painful periods. What was a bit easier to share were the painfully frustrating experiences of the present – struggling against the Defense Ministry to receive rehabilitation and compensation, and attempting to get back one’s own pre-traumatic self and life.
It was impossible not to ache with the pain of these young men. We, the two therapists of the group, focused at first on the basic, almost unattainable aim of enabling each of the stories to be told, while aiding the participants’ self-regulatory abilities so that they would not become overwhelmed with anxiety and flashbacks.
We put every effort into being attuned to their need to vent their endless and helpless rage at what they now conceived as the meaninglessness of their experiences. I would finish these sessions exhausted. My identification with the suffering of these group members, their anxieties, their helplessness, their depletion of energy, was so extreme that I had to permanently change my schedule so that I would not have to see any patients for the rest of the day after the group meetings.
In retrospect, I can say that I had the empathic capacity to identify with the suffering of these patients, and I had the professional ability to contain, interpret and help them learn to understand many of their post traumatic responses.
Surprisingly, despite these understandings, I had yet to discover my own blindness and denial. Although these young men were victims, the very fact that they had also been aggressors, deploying violence, was being totally barred from consciousness – both the group’s and my own. Not once, neither inside the group sessions, nor in peer supervision, nor even in my private thoughts while considering the group, had I been receptive to the thought that they were perpetrators, who had killed, injured and detained not only Hezbollah fighters and Palestinian suicide bombers, but also thousands of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians, including children.
For months I had managed to keep intact my one-dimensional identification with these soldiers, so that I related to them exclusively as victims. Even though I have gone through extensive psychoanalytic training that usually serves me well in interpreting unconscious material, and even though I am active against the occupation and have Palestinian friends and colleagues who tell me about their hardships facing Israeli soldiers, I had lost my ability to identify with the multi-dimensional aspects of my patients’ inner world, i.e. both victim and perpetrator elements of their self-experiences.
I experienced many unforgettable moments in this group. I will share one of them with you. David, one of the members, described a chaotic battle where his unit had to retreat under heavy combat, after having suffered many casualties. Those able to walk carried the wounded and dead with them. David himself was severely wounded and had passed out. After having been rescued by his peers, one of them told him that they had almost left him behind, as there was hardly any light in the building where they fought, and they had at first mistaken him to be one of the enemy casualties. David had a sentence he kept repeating, session after session, clearly obsessed by it: “They almost left me there to die because they thought I was a terrorist.”
It seems that his trauma was a result, not only of being on the verge of death, but even more than that – being thought of as the enemy, the violent perpetrator. David could not bear acknowledging his identity as an Israeli aggressor, and neither could I contain my identity as Israeli aggressor. We both kept clinging on to our partial identities as victims and as those who could only do good deeds.
Conclusion
Hanna Segal is one of the psychoanalysts who bravely bridged the gap between the therapeutic and public spheres. She wrote: “We wish to deny the consequences of our actions to others and to ourselves and also to deny any aggressive impulses or actions on our own part… I suggest that there is some evidence that such resistances to knowing are active in our public life… This attitude involves the operation of denial. Close to denial, but not identical to it, is the turning of a blind eye.” (Segal, 1987). In a postscript written a decade later (Segal, 2002), she added: “The dread of annihilation, which is part of all of us, is the dread of our own death drives with their aim of disrupting, dispersing and annihilating life. Our primary defence is to project it outside and to kill it there. But it doesn’t work. We cannot annihilate all evil and terror without destroying ourselves because it’s a part of us.”
Segal’s voice is unique, as it seems that not only the Israeli analytic community tends to disregard its own aggression. The last decades have seen prolific analytic writing on terrorism, war, national hate and more, but almost all explore the dynamics of the threatened [of others?]. One example is Otto Kernberg, the prominent American psychoanalyst, who writes (2003): “what I am exploring is the emergence of socially sanctioned violent behavior against unarmed, defenseless, non-combatant civilians, sustained sadistic, intentional destructive behavior against other human beings that would ordinarily run against the most basic and essential assumptions of humane concern for self and others, against basic principles of morality regarding the treatment of other human beings, and typically in dramatically sharp contrast to the ordinary standards and social behavior of the same violent individuals in their lives outside the specific area of violent interactions with selected human groups. The twentieth century has given dramatic and frightening evidence of social violence as thus defined.” He goes on to give examples only of non-American national ideologies that gave rise to national violence such as Nazism and USSR communism, completely disregarding the United States acts of war, that also targeted civilians.
Returning to the Middle East, I suggest that, at this point in history, Israeli psychoanalysts need an outside Third, that might help us take notice when we disregard the Palestinians – not only their trauma, but also their humanity, their professional community, and sadly any possibility for non-violent communication. I call on the international community to help us where we have not managed to help ourselves; however, most of the outside would-be-helpers have seemed to collapse into their own one-dimensional viewpoints. As shown, the German professional community have no inner mental space to consider Israelis as perpetrators; I also fear that there are some professional communities whose mental space collapsed to the opposing viewpoint, considering the Israelis as the only perpetrators [and only as perpetrators] in this tragic conflict, overlooking the real dangers Israel is facing.
Thus, I would like to conclude with the following question: Is there a way to broaden the Israeli consciousness safely? Could we own and acknowledge our strengths and dangerous aggression together with our vulnerable weaknesses, without being overwhelmed by unbearable anxiety?
Only then might we open our blind eyes and begin to address the humane existence of those we try to defend against.
Bibliography:
Kernberg, O. F. (2003) Sanctioned social violence: A psychoanalytic view Part I. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 84:683-698
Segal, H. (1987) Silence is the Real Crime. International Review of Psychoanalysis 14:3-12
Segal, H. Silence is the real crime – postscript (2002), in: Terrorism and War, Unconscious Dynamics of Political Violence, Covington C. et al. (eds.), Routledge
Short Bio of Author:
Arnona Zahavi is a supervising adult and child psychoanalyst at Tel Aviv Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, a supervising clinical psychologist, and a group therapist. Some of her recent work includes:
- Head of the Ramat Hen Therapeutic Kindergartens at the Autism Treatment and Research Center.
- Member of Psychoactive – Mental Health Practitioners for Human Rights, initiating and taking part in projects dealing with the heavy psychological toll of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian people on both nations.
- Member of Physicians for Human Rights, including supervision to the staff of the Open Clinic, which provides medical care to refugees, and participation in the Mobile Medical Clinic in the Occupied Territories.
[1] I would like to thank Michal Kaiser-Livne for inviting me.
[2] For a more detailed account, see in this newsletter: Report from Voices after Auschwitz, by Regine Scholz, issue 87 of Contexts