JEWISH-ISRAELIPEACEBUILDERS AND THE HOLOCAUST:
PERCEPTIONS, NATIONAL MYTHS,
MEANING AND ACTIONS
By
Anne Marie Marsa
Submitted to the
Faculty of the School of International Service
of American University
in Partial Fulfillment of
the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of the Arts
In
Ethics, Peace, and Global Affairs
Chair:
Mohammed Abu-Nimer
he A. Mertus
QO (3-1 O' Louis W. Goodman, Dean a H fo u frfT 2^rQ(= Date (J
2006
American University
Washington, D.C. 20016 AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.
Viktor E. Frankl
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. JEWISH-ISRAELIPEACEBUILDERS AND THE HOLOCAUST:
PERCEPTIONS, NATIONAL MYTHS,
MEANING AND ACTIONS
BY
Anne Marie Marsa
ABSTRACT
This study considers the Holocaust’s continuing psychological impact on Jewish-Israelis and on their treatment of others. It concludes that a significant factor behind Israel’s aggression toward Palestinians, and toward perceived enemy-others in the region, manifests a residual, collective trauma, reinforced by the horrors of the Nazi holocaust. However, some Jewish-Israeli Holocaust survivors and their descendants do not participate in this sense of trauma and related aggression, but work for peace and justice for Palestinians. Through interviews with these social deviants, and qualitative analysis, this study examines their perceptions and motivations, considering how they relate to the Holocaust and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and how these views were developed. The findings reveal these salient characteristics that influence how they relate to Palestinians: for Holocaust survivors, experiences of empowerment as compared to helplessness during the Holocaust. For children and grandchildren of survivors, parental role modeling and empathic ways of relating to others.
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my dear parents, Robert and Ulrike, and my sister and
brother, Karen and David, for their love and support. I would also like to thank Ilham
Nasser, Father David Neuhaus, and Nahanni Rous for helping me establish initial
contacts in Israel; Dan Bar-On for going out of his way to recommend relevant sources
for my research, and for taking the time to meet with me while I was in Israel. My thesis
chair, Mohammed Abu-Nimer and thesis advisor, Julie Mertus, for being instrumental
sounding boards, and for their efforts and valuable suggestions I remain grateful. A
special word of thanks to Cherie Rouse and Barbara Kirby for editing this thesis in its
entirety; their assistance and expertise has been invaluable. I would also like to thank
Tazreena Sajjad and Shane Boris for reviewing the final versions of this thesis, and for
providing helpful critiques and suggestions.
To others whom I remain appreciative: Danyce Mills, and Susan and James
Walters, who have been a wonderful and positive part of my life for many years; and to
my dear friends, who have added much joy and depth to my life. Sarah, thanks for being
such a kind and tolerant roommate. Majeed, your support and encouragement has meant
so very much.
And of course, this work would not have been possible without the brave women
and men who willingly shared their thoughts and experiences with me, and whose life
stories, ethics and actions, remain a source of true inspiration.
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT...... ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...... iii
Chapter
1. THE PAST IS PROLOGUE...... 1
Development of Research Topic ...... 2
Significance of Study...... 3
Rationale for Theoretical Approach ...... 5
Outline of Chapters ...... 7
2. LITERATURE REVIEW...... 9
Chosen Traumas: Transmission of Transgenerational Trauma ...... 10
The Holocaust and Jewish-Israeli Identity ...... 14
Cycles of Violence: Germans, Jews and Palestinians...... 23
Mourning, Healing and Identity Construction...... 28
Context and Genocidal Behavior ...... 32
Psychodynamics and Holocaust Meanings...... 38
3. METHODOLOGY...... 44
4. A RELATIONAL APPROACH TO THE HOLOCAUST...... 52
Object Relations Theory and the Holocaust ...... 54
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5. VICTIMIZATION, EMPOWERMENT, AND OUTCOMES: THE EXPERIENCES OF ORIGINAL HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS...... 61
Empowerment versus Helplessness ...... 82
6. CARRYING THE TORCH: THE DESCENDANTS OF SURVIVORS ...... 84
7. ON EMPATHY ...... 95
Realistic and Cognitive Empathy ...... 96
Affective Empathy ...... 99
Empathy as an Impediment to Aggression and Dehumanization ...... 100
Development of Empathy in Childhood ...... 108
8. ON DISRUPTING THE STATUS QUO AND CHALLENGING AUTHORITY...... 116
Like Sheep to the Slaughter: Israeli Culture on Weakness ...... 121
9. CATALYSTS...... 128
A Crisis in Perception...... 129
10. CONCLUSION: A HUMAN-CENTERED APPROACH...... 140
Implication of These Findings for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict 143
Preserving the Humane Tradition through Education ...... 145
11. BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 148
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 1
THE PAST IS PROLOGUE
Overview of Study
The barren landscape of Be’er Sheva stretched out around me under a bright
February sun. I was on my way to meet with Israeli social psychologist Dan Bar-On,
well known for his conciliation work with children of the Third Reich, second-generation
Holocaust survivors, and Palestinians.
By this time I had been in Israel for over a month interviewing Holocaust
survivors, as well as the descendants of Holocaust survivors, who work in a variety of
ways for understanding, peace, social justice, and equity for and with Palestinians. I
came here to learn more about what led them to be involved in such work; and I
wondered how their direct ties to the Holocaust influenced their activism and perceptions
of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I also wanted to learn if there were other significant
life experiences they had in common that influenced their decisions to become involved
in such efforts.
Several characteristics set these Holocaust survivors and these descendants of
Holocaust survivors, which I interviewed, apart from a large percentage of Israeli society.
The way they have responded to the suffering and victimization of Palestinians is one of
the most salient. Additionally, they think and act the way they do despite strong social
1
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pressures around them to consider and do otherwise; and they retain such stances while
living in a society which is at war more or less constantly, if not physically, then
psychologically. One of the underlying questions I had from the beginning of this project
was whether I would find a direct correlation between the way these individuals relate to
the traumas of the Holocaust and the way they relate to Palestinians. I am not the first to
consider such a relationship. University professor and director of the Center for
American and Jewish Studies at Baylor University, Marc Ellis, suggests:
It is my view that Jews, Judaism and Jewish life at the dawn of the twenty- first century come after the Holocaust and Israel, and that the outsider/insider dimension of Palestinians, though controversial and unannounced, is central to the fragmentation of Jewish life. It may also be the key to its renewed viability.1
If my findings establish such a correlation, then one of the most interesting questions
becomes: How are these exceptional Israelis able to process their past traumas without
further dehumanizing and devaluing others? What has enabled them to respond in the
way that they have?
Development of Research Topic
The aggression the state of Israel exhibits toward Palestinians and perceived
enemy-others in the region may be explained to some extent as a manifestation of a
residual collective trauma imprinted upon Jewish consciousness over the centuries. The
Nazi holocaust marked the height of this discrimination and racism directed at Jews,
during which Nazis tortured and brutally murdered an estimated 11 million people, 6
million of which it has been estimated, were Jews. Moving beyond individual and
1 Marc H. Ellis, Out of the Ashes (London: Pluto Press, 2002), 15.
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historical trauma is no simple task; this feat becomes increasingly difficult as events such
as the Holocaust become central to the identities of groups and individuals. This does not
only characterize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also reflects a reality which is
profoundly human in origin.
The question then becomes: How can social groups - and in this case a country -
begin the recovery process from such residual trauma? Because traumatic experiences do
not resolve or heal themselves, individuals and social groups must work through these
collective traumas. Unresolved group traumas frequently lead to situations in which
whole societies become hostages to their pasts. This situation reaps devastation and
destruction in the present through psychological vices that Freud labeled “displaced
aggression” and “repetition compulsion.” Motivated by the threat that the demons of the
past (i.e. the Holocaust) will reappear to claim those in the present, the resultant hyper
vigilance and fear justify the perceived need for aggressive behavior, both offensive and
defensive in nature.
Significance of Study
Major international leaders and scholars have largely overlooked the phenomenon
of a society transmitting collective trauma from one generation to succeeding generations
and the elements which may disrupt this transmission. One reason may be that outsiders
inherently experience difficulty addressing such issues. War correspondent Michael
Ignatieff notes the “limits to the healing that outsiders can bring.” He states further that
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“ethnic war remains a family quarrel, a duel to the death between brothers that can only
be resolved within• • the family, • and only when fear no longer rules.” 1
Outsiders may be unable to aid healing, but circumstance sometimes necessitates
outside interference. In an age when the ideology of the international community does not
tolerate genocide, outsiders sometimes attempt to intercede to stop or prevent genocides
and ethnic cleansing. Healing and reconciliation then become of paramount importance
for developing long-term stability among different national, ethnic, and religious groups.
Learning how to interfere with positive effect remains a challenge for outside
international actors. One individual, psychiatrist Vamik Volkan, has worked at length on
such issues in an international context. His work with the WHO and UN High
Commissioner for Refugees has raised the concern that these organizations have not
seriously considered the issue of intergenerational transmission of trauma. Volkan
observes:
The official joint manual of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR; 1996) on the mental health of refugees mentions only crisis intervention methods, relaxation techniques, alcohol and drug problems, and professional conduct toward rape victims. Of course, after a disaster, the crisis situation must take precedence over other considerations, but when the crisis is over, crucial psychological processes continue in full force. The WHO/UNHCR report does not refer at all to the serious issues of societal response and transgenerational transmission following ethnic, national, and religious conflicts.3
This issue, breaking the cycle of trauma, should gamer more sustained attention in the
future, because of the implications it has for creating sustainable peace.
2 Michael Ignatieff, The Warrior's Honor (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997), 7. 3Gabriele Ast Vamik D. Volkan, William F. Greer, Jr., ed., The Third Reich in the Unconscious (New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2002), 11.
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However, healing is an intensely personal and enigmatic process in many
respects. Both the process, and the arrival point of having healed, do not lend themselves
to easy definition, and perhaps the absence of healing remains the most obvious. Notes
Ignatieff:
In the former Yugoslavia, in Rwanda, and in South Africa.. .the past continues to torment because it is not past. These places are not living in a serial order of time but in a simultaneous one, in which the past and the present are a continuous, agglutinated mass of fantasies, distortions, myths, and lies...4
Working through the past becomes imperative for establishing lasting peace in such
regions. With each passing decade, the realization of the need for peace becomes more
pressing. As Eugene Weiner notes, the “idea that states and peoples are free to conduct
their quarrels, no matter how deadly... [is] outdated in the nuclear age and in a shrinking
world where local hostilities can rapidly become international ones with devastating
consequences.”5 The recent war between Hezbollah and Israel is particularly frightening
because it possesses such escalation potential in the region.
Rationale for Theoretical Approach
Social-psychological approaches have much to offer in conflict analysis, because
psychological and social factors are inherent in almost every conflict. Those espousing
political approaches, based on a power-politics paradigm, frequently object to
psychologizing political and interstate conflict. However, as social psychologist Ron
Fisher observes, “while conflict often arises out of objective and ideological differences,
4 Ignatieff, The Warrior's Honor, 186. 5 Eugene Weiner, ed., The Handbook o f Interethnic Coexistence (New York: The Continuum Publishing Company, 1998), 30.
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its escalation and intractability are typically the result of psychological and social
factors.”6 Although difficulties may arise in trying to compare the psychological
processes of individuals and of nations, little question remains that both participate in and
are influence by powerful psychological forces. Gary Weaver writes:
International conflict is often caused by a genuine clash of interests between nations which cannot be resolved through peaceful means. However, the primary causes of war may have little to do with such realistic or rational considerations. Perceptions or images of reality may be more important than reality itself when it comes to explaining the dynamics of international conflict.. . . If we want to prevent or stop wars, we must understand how people from other nations or cultures think and how they view themselves and others.7
My subject matter considers the long-term impact of traumatic events on individuals and
nations-ultimately, the ways in which specific individuals overcome traumatic pasts.
This topic calls for social-psychological and psychoanalytic frameworks and premises.
This research project seeks to address extraordinarily complex issues, and obvious
limitations arise from trusting in any single discipline’s ability to provide “answers” or
solutions in discussing protracted conflicts in war-torn regions. I hope that this research
will contribute a new perspective, rather than a conclusive one, for considering the
Holocaust’s continual psychological impact on Israeli society and its treatment of others,
particularly its military actions. Whereas I address this subject at some length, chiefly in
the literature review, this research project is ultimately about the extraordinary Jewish-
Israeli men and women who are working for understanding and peace with Palestinians.
6 Mohammed Abu-Nimer, ed.,Reconciliation, Justice, and Coexistence (New York: Lexington Books, 2001), 28. 7 Gary R. Weaver, ed.,Culture, Communication and Conflict, 2nd ed. (MA: Pearson Publishing, 2000), 388.
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As Indian scholar Sudir Karkar writes in his analysis of Hindu-Muslim relations
in India, and with direct relevance to this topic:
... there are always some individuals whose personal identity is not overwhelmed by their religious or cultural group identity even in the worst phases of violent conflict. These are persons capable of acts of compassion and self-sacrifice, such as saving members of the “enemy” group from the fury of a rampaging mob even at considerable danger to their own physical safety ... What the social and psychological conditions are that make [one this way] is a question to which the answers are not only of theoretical interest but also of profound practical importance and moral significance.8
The research presented here is intended to provide insight into the inner workings of
these Jewish-Israeli peace activists. Additionally, it is intended to pay tribute to their
courageous, inspiring commitments and efforts; emphasizing the need to treat
Palestinians justly, with dignity.
Outline of Chapters
This thesis comprises nine chapters. Chapter 1 reviews the relevant literature; it
addresses the manner in which the traumatic experiences of one group, suffered at the
hand of another, can lead the victimized group to dehumanize and violate the rights of
others, with specific regard to Israel and the role of the Holocaust in this process. The
literature review seeks to establish the context from which this case study emerges.
Understanding this process allows for a more complete appreciation and a deeper analysis
of the individual interviewees’ deviations from and alignments with this same process.
Chapter 2 discusses the methodological approach and the research design used to
construct and implement this research project. It also details the rationale behind the
8 Sudhir Kakar, The Colours o f Violence (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1995), 244-245.
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design and conduct of the interviews.
Chapters 3 through 8 discuss my findings, specifically the salient common
denominators that have influenced the involvement of Jewish-Israeli first-, second- and
third-generation Holocaust survivors in various peacebuilding efforts in Israel. In doing
so, I consider common personality characteristics and significant life experiences that
have motivated these individuals, influencing how they relate to the Holocaust. Yet, the
elements that comprise our identities and influence our actions are extremely complex.
While realizing the limitations of trying to analyze the impetus behind human cognition,
affect, and behavior, I seek to explain the recurrent themes and patterns that emerge in
light of relevant sociological, psychological, and psychodynamic theories. I focus
primarily on theories concerning personality development and socialization.
Finally, I wish to make it clear that this work is not intended as a polemical
approach to the issues that it delves into. This work is intended to explore, analyze,
deconstruct, and reconstruct—to consider closely why and how it is possible to make
psychological space for the Other, and as a result, create space for sustainable peace.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
In this chapter, I consider (1) the ways in which the residual trauma of the
Holocaust has become culturally and socially ingrained in Israeli society and (2) the
subsequent impetus this gives to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Holocaust has taken
on mythic proportions in much of Jewish-Israeli society. Ellis suggests that this has
helped facilitate the development of a prevalent worldview that enables a significant
proportion of the Jewish-Israeli populace to overlook the rights and equal value of other
groups, as well as the causal relationship that exists between what Israelis do and what
happens to them.9 Because, psychologically, eternal victims can do no wrong and can
only be wronged, they fail to acknowledge responsibility for their part in perpetuating the
conflict and violence. As Ignatieff notes:
Peoples who believe themselves to be victims of aggression have an understandable incapacity to believe that they too have committed atrocities. Myths of innocence and victimhood are a powerful obstacle in the way of confronting responsibility, as are atrocity myths about the other side.10
For example, a recent study by Keren, Zakovitch, and Auron, conducted in Israel,
inferred how Israeli society relates to anti-Semitism by examining the way children and
9 Ellis, Out o f the Ashes, 13-14. 10 Michael Ignatieff, The Worrier's Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscious (New York: Henry Holt and Company, Inc, 1997), 176. 9
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young adults learn about it.11 The study revealed that the majority of the subjects gleaned
information about the Holocaust from media and school sources, and these perspectives
directly influenced the images they developed of Palestinians. The report notes that the
way “these young people relate to discriminatory behavior towards Palestinians in Israel
is completely different from how they relate to similar behavior towards Jews in the past
or the present.”12 The connection the authors draw between the capacities for violence
and attachment bears relevance: “We fight with other people in the belief that we are
protecting ourselves, our loved ones, and the group with which we identify most strongly.
Altruism and aggression are intimately linked in war and other conflicts.”13 Massive
traumas have the propensity to create stronger “us”-“them” boundaries as well as
emotional-empathic distancing from others, ultimately resulting in a greater capacity to
dehumanize and harm others.
Chosen Traumas: Transmission of Transgenerational Trauma
Ata Qaymari, a Palestinian journalist, writes that:
As long as the Jews cannot overcome the trauma of their Holocaust and continue to fear future integration with others, it will be impossible for them to reach... reconciliation... If the Holocaust continues to shape our present and our future [in the way it has until now], it will not enable the Jews to overcome their fears and thus establish normal relations that are not based on historical psychological precipitants, but instead on future prospects and potentials.14
11 Nili Keren, Gila Zakovitch, and Yair Auron,Antisemitism and Racism: A Study of the Attitudes of High School Students in Israel (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv 1997). 12Paul Scham & Walid Salem & Benjamin Pogrund, ed., Shared Histories a Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue (Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press Inc., 2005), 144. 13 Weiner, ed.,29. 14 Pogrund, ed.,152.
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It is important to consider the impact that massive collective traumas can have on
multiple groups. For example, Israeli psychologist Dan Bar-On writes:
The Palestinian argument that they have ‘paid the price’ ... for the Nazi aggression against the Jews in the Shoah [Holocaust], cannot be totally ignored. One could claim that the Palestinian acts of hostility towards Israeli Jews hit an open nerve and brought extreme reaction from the Jewish side.15
Whereas Bar-On discusses this concept within the conceptual frame work of displaced
aggression (addressed below), Vamik Volkan discusses this in terms of what he calls a
“chosen trauma, ...a disaster in which an identifiable enemy group has intentionally
inflicted pain, suffering, shame, humiliation, and helplessness on its victims,” a disaster
“that... trigger[s] a ... large-group identity process.”16 Furthermore, the injured group
“draws the mental representations or emotional meanings of the traumatic event into its
very identity, and then ... passes on the emotional and symbolic meaning from generation
to generation.”17 The power - and indeed the very definitive quality of a chosen trauma -
lies in the coagulating affect it has on the construction of group and individual identities
across time and space. According to Volkan, this quality delineates chosen traumas from
other types of traumas. Volkan emphasizes that the massive collective trauma must
become intertwined with the core identity of every (or almost every) individual member
of the large group.18 He further explains that “a chosen trauma reflects the traumatized
past generation’s incapacity for or difficulty with mourning losses connected to the
15 Dan Bar-On, "Why Did the Jews Not Take Revenge on the Germans after the War: A Case of Displacement," Socio-Analysis 4 (2002): 20. 16 Vamik D. Volkan, ed.,10. 17 V.D. Volkan, "On 'Chosen Trauma',"Mind and Human Interaction 3, no. 1 (1991): 13. 18 Vamik D. Volkan, ed., The Third Reich in the Unconscious,42.
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shared traumatic event, as well as its failure to reverse the humiliation and injury to the
group’s self-esteem inflicted by another.”19
The Transmission Process
A signature characteristic of traumatized persons is their psychic construction of
past and present. For them, the past is present, as described by Volkan: “For the survivor,
persons in the present become identified with those who were involved in the original
trauma, including victimizer, victim, and wished-for helper.”20 According to Volkan,
such intergenerational transmissions do not merely pass on historical facts or personal
recollections, but also:
highly dynamic complexes of recollection, fantasies, affects, wishes, and defenses ... whose influences are transmitted ... Persisting in the minds of members consciously and unconsciously, these complexes have long life spans - in some cases, hundreds of years. It is this complex of mental representation that is passed to future generations who, as “carriers,” must cope with the unmastered psychological tasks given to them by their ancestors.21
Israeli society still commonly perceives Palestinians as the new face of their
would-be Nazis annihilators.22 Such allusions fit neatly into the social and historical
narrative of Jewish persecution and are affirmed by devastating suicide bombings and
missiles sent into Israel from the Palestinian territories and surrounding countries. The
deep sense of past and present victimization plays an important role in creating the lens
19 Ibid. 20 Ibid.,25. 21 Ibid. 22 Tom Segev, The Seventh Million the Israelis and the Holocaust (New York: Henry Hold and Company, LLC, 2000), 69-72. Palestinians have also made use of such terms, comparing Israeli actions to the actions of Hitler and the Nazis as another way of trying to express their frustration with the military and political power held by the Israelis.
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through which Jewish-Israelis’ look upon and justify the harsh offensive and defensive
military and political tactics employed against Palestinians. Psychologically, this lens
also rationalizes the racism and discrimination deeply imbedded in Israeli society toward
the Palestinian populace both in and outside of Israel proper.23
Breaking the cycle of violence, and breaking the justification for the use of
violence, intolerance, and dehumanization, is an ongoing struggle between Jewish-
Israelis and Palestinians in Israel and the Palestinian territories. As anyone knows who
has worked, studied, or lived in societies immersed in conflicts that are significantly
identity-based, impediments in acknowledging the rights and the humanness of the other
group frequently result from having experienced overwhelming pain and loss historically
and/or personally. Volkan notes that it becomes the task of the following generations to
“deal with the same rage, helplessness, entitlement, and guilt that the previous
generation/s have been unable to work through for themselves.”24
Ignatieff offers an interesting perspective on the role of revenge in the
transmission of historical grievances and traumas:
The chief moral obstacle in the path of reconciliation is the desire for revenge ... revenge is commonly regarded as a low and unworthy emotion, and because it is regarded as such, its deep moral hold on people is rarely understood. But revenge - morally considered - is a desire to keep faith with the dead, to honor their memory by taking up their cause ... Revenge keeps faith between generations; the violence it engenders is a ritual form of respect for the community’s dead - therein lies its legitimacy. Reconciliation is difficult precisely because it must compete with the powerful alternative morality of violence. Political terror is tenacious because it is an ethical practice. It is a cult of the dead, a dire and absolute expression of respect.25
23 Norman G. Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah on the Misuse ofAnti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (Berkeley: University o f California Press, 2005), 8-9. 24 Vamik D. Volkan, ed., The Third Reich in the Unconscious,37. 25 Ignatieff, The Warrier's Honor: Ethnic War and the Modem Conscious, 188.
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Ignatieff further observes, from his experience in different war zones, that the only way
to reconcile and stop the cycle of violence is by honoring the emotions that sustain
vengeance, by sincerely apologizing and by recognizing the loss that has occurred. He
writes that the last task of reconciliation, the mourning of the dead, is where the desire for
peace must vanquish the ongoing desire for revenge. Society must replace the respect
entailed in vengeance with rituals in which communities once at war learn to mourn the
dead together.26
The Holocaust and Jewish-Israeli Identity
The Holocaust is held close in Israel. The Holocaust has had a profound
influence from the very foundation of the state of Israel. Holocaust survivors accounted
for about 40% of those who immigrated to Israel in the first great wave of immigration
after World War II.27 For Jews, especially Ashkenazim, one of the strongest references
for victimization comes from the Holocaust, although the experience of being a
persecuted people has been a part of Jewish identity for centuries. Individuals and sub
groups show variance in the ways they absorb or respond to trauma, but the Holocaust
represents for many the most recent and one of the most extreme examples of the Jewish
experience of persecution and dehumanization that has been occurring for centuries. As
Stein writes:
It is as if to say: “It has always happened, and it will happen again. The Holocaust is one in a long line of attempts to get rid of Jews.” In the Jewish Passover Haggadah, the text for the home service, Jews are
26 Ibid., 190. 27 Pogrund, ed.,140.
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admonished to live as if they themselves had been the generation just redeemed from Egypt. Each generation is obligated to celebrate the Exodus in this way. Likewise, since the end of World War II, a new section has been added to many Passover services, one that commemorates the 1943 uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. Here, distant past becomes present, and near-present is enveloped in the past.28
Kept in the forefront of Jewish-Israeli social consciousness, the Holocaust continually
reminds the people of what would most certainly happen to Jews if Jews were without a
homeland and unable to protect themselves. As Tom Segev writes:
As a justification for the State of Israel, the Holocaust is comparable only to the divine promise contained in the Bible: It seems to be definitive proof of the Zionist argument that Jews can live in security and with frill equal rights only in their own country and that they therefore must have an autonomous and sovereign state, strong enough to defend its existence.29
The speech that Prime Minister Menachem Begin gave to Egyptian President Anwar
Sadat upon Sadat’s arrival in Jerusalem in 1977, during the customary trip made by
visiting dignitaries to the Holocaust Museum (Yad Vashem), reflects Segev’s statements:
No one came to save us - neither from the East nor from the West. For this reason, we have sworn a vow, we, the generation of extermination and rebirth: Never again will we put our nation in danger, never again will we put our women and children and those whom we have a duty to defend - if necessary at the cost of our lives - in range of the enemy’s deadly fire.30
The influence of the Holocaust on Israeli identity has been further studied by
Jewish social-psychologist Simon Herman and fellow scholars Charles Liebman and
Eliezer Don-Yehiya. Herman viewed the Holocaust as focal point for sharing a common
sense of destiny between Jews and Israelis. Liebman and Don-Yehiya went so for as to
28Howard F. Stein, "The Holocaust, the Self, and the Question of Wholeness: A Response to Lewin,"Ethos 21, no. 4(1993): 500. 29 Segev,514. 30 Ibid.,398.
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say that the Holocaust has become the “civil religion” of Israel.31 Noted Jewish scholar
Paul Scham observes:
For Jews who cannot relate to traditional Judaism as a religion, this is something that has acquired a status of its own with its own symbols and its own understanding. It has become one of the kinds of glue that hold Israeli society together. This is even [truer] of the society in ... the United States ... [where frequently] ... Israel and the Holocaust are considered the two mam Jewish symbols.
The Holocaust has become intricately woven into the core identities of Israelis
and Jews all over the world. Considering the diversity within Judaism and
between Jews, as well as the need to justify Israel’s existence to the rest of the
world (especially the Arab world), the Holocaust became a powerful unifier and
Israel’s raison d ’etre.
The Politicization of the Holocaust
For a complete discussion of the Holocaust and its impact on the Israeli identity,
we must also consider the way the Holocaust has been misused for political and financial
gain and the way this in itself sows its own seeds of self-destruction. Political scientist
Norman Finkelstein describes this in such a thorough and devastating manner that his
readers will likely never experience a Holocaust museum in the same way again.
Finkelstein blames the exploitation of the Holocaust by Jewish-American elites and Israel
for exacerbating anti-Semitism around the world. This is perhaps one of the greatest
ironies and travesties of which he writes:
31 Pogrund, ed.,143. 32 Ibid., 162.
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Like the Holocaust, “anti-Semitism” is an ideological weapon to deflect justified criticism of Israel and, concomitantly, powerful Jewish interests. In its current usage, “anti-Semitism,” alongside the “war against terrorism” serves as a cloak for a massive assault on international law and human rights. Those Jews committed to the struggle against the real anti-Semitism must, in the first instance, expose this specious “anti-Semitism” for the sham it is.
In his book The Holocaust Industry (2003), Finkelstein’s vehement attack on what he
labels the “Holocaust industry” shocks the reader. But perhaps what disquiets one most
about his work is that it severely shakes the foundation of one’s own understanding of the
intent behind the public representation of the Holocaust.
Finkelstein would most certainly be labeled anti-Semitic except that he is Jewish
and his desire to honor the suffering and memory of the Holocaust permeates his work.
He states, “My concern ... is [in] restoring the integrity of the historical record and the
sanctity of the Jewish people’s martyrdom. I deplore the Holocaust industry’s corruption
of history and memory in the service of an extortion racket.”34 This topic obviously
holds great significance for him, as a child of survivor parents from the Ghetto Warsaw
and Auschwitz.35 Regarding his mother, Finkelstein writes:
The time is long past to open our hearts to the rest of humanity’s sufferings. This was the main lesson my mother imparted. I never once heard her say: Do not compare. My mother always compared. No doubt historical distinctions must be made. But to make out moral distinctions between “our” suffering and “theirs” is itself a moral travesty ... In the face of the sufferings of African-Americans, Vietnamese and Palestinians, my mother’s credo always was: We are all holocaust victims.36
According to Finkelstein, “The Holocaust” (note his capitalizations) has been an
“indispensable ideological weapon” employed by “one of the world’s most formidable
33 Finkelstein,84. 34 Norman G. Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry Reflections on the Exploitation o f Jewish Suffering, 2d ed. (New York: Verso, 2003), xiii. 35 Ibid.,5 36 Ibid.,8
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military powers, with a horrendous human rights record,” which has successfully “cast
itself as a ‘victim’ state,” while simultaneously enabling “the most successful ethnic
group in the United States” to acquire victim status.37
Finkelstein’s meticulous and damning outline of the historical menage a trois
between American-Jewish elites, U.S. foreign policy and Israel exposes a dimension of
this relationship that is often neglected or goes undetected by many other studies and
analyses. Finkelstein discusses this relationship as one forged in greed, exploitation
(even by one another), and the quest for sustained power and dominance, which, he
argues, ultimately has devastating consequences for Jews all over the world.38
Finkelstein observes that for more than 20 years after the Holocaust, Israel and the
Holocaust did not significantly factor in the lives of American Jewry. He writes, “Israel
practically dropped from sight in American Jewish life soon after the founding of the
• i q . state. In fact, Israel was not important to American Jews.” He continues to state that
“American-Jewish elites harbored profound misgivings about a Jewish state. Uppermost
was their fear that it would lend credence to the ‘dual loyalty’ charge,” during the witch-
hunting days of the Cold War.40 He observes:
The real reason for public silence on the Nazi extermination was the conformist policies of the American Jewish leadership and the political climate of postwar America. In both domestic and international affairs American Jewish elites hewed closely to official U.S. policy. Doing so in effect facilitated the traditional goals of assimilation and access to power. 41
37 Ibid.,3 38 Ibid.,30-32. 39 Ibid.,18. 40 Ibid., 17. 41 Ibid.,13-14.
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Finkelstein carries on to successfully argue that American Jewry’s identification
and affinity for Israel was a result of Israel’s successful military effort during the 1967
war: “It was not Israel’s alleged weakness and isolation, not the fear of a ‘second
Holocaust,’ but rather its proven strength and strategic alliance with the United States that
led Jewish elites to gear up the Holocaust industry after June 1967.”42 The politicization
of the Holocaust has had a devastating impact on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For
example Israel has acquired a horrible human rights record. Finkelstein states:
This [Holocaust] dogma has ... conferred total license on Israel: Intent as the Gentiles always are on murdering Jews, Jews have every right to protect themselves, however they see fit. Whatever expedient Jews might resort to, even aggression and torture, constitutes legitimate self-defense ... Boas Evron observes that it “is really tantamount to a deliberate breeding of paranoia.. .This mentality ... condones in advance any inhuman treatment of non-Jews, for the prevailing mythology is that ‘all people collaborated with the Nazis in the destruction of Jewry,’ hence everything is permissible to Jews in their relationship to other peoples.43
Additionally, the Holocaust has fueled justification of racist attitudes and actions
toward Palestinian Arabs.44 Serious scholarly studies have dispelled much of the Zionist
mythology surrounding the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is now widely
accepted that the Palestinians were ethnically cleansed in 1948. However, scholars
debate on the “question of whether this cleansing was the intentional consequence of
Zionist policy or the unintentional by-product of war.”45
Finkelstein asserts that “most of the controversy surrounding the Israel-Palestine
conflict is, in my view, contrived. The purpose of contriving such controversy is
transparently political: to deflect attention from, or distort, the actual documentary
42 Ibid.,31. 43 Ibid.,50-51. 44 Ibid.,42. 45 Finkelstein,Beyond Chutzpah on the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse o f History,3
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record.”46 According to Finkelstein, this clouding of the issues became desirable,
because “in the great scheme of things, the fate of Jews was simply more important than
that of Arabs.”47
A Note on German-Israeli Conciliation
The conciliation process between Germany and Israel has been an arduous and
delicate one; requiring sophisticated financial and political maneuvering along with the
passage of time. Thus far the process has comprised the following: financial
compensation, creation of political and military relationships, and formal diplomatic
relations, cultural exchanges and development projects.
In 1952, the German government endeavored to compensate Jewish victims with
three different agreements, described by Norman Finkelstein: “Individual claimants
received payments according to the terms of the Law on Indemnification ... A separate
agreement with Israel subsidized the absorption and rehabilitation of several hundred
thousand Jewish refugees.”48 Additionally, the German government “negotiated at the
same time a financial settlement with the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against
Germany, an umbrella of all major Jewish organizations.”49 The organizations
represented at the Claims Conference received today’s equivalent of one billion dollars
46 Ibid.,6 47 Ibid.,9 48 Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering,84. 49 Ibid.,85.
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for 12 years toward helping Holocaust survivors who had not received adequate financial
compensation.50
Many years passed before Israel developed formal diplomatic relations with
Germany. In 1960, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion met with German
Chancellor Conrad Adenauer in New York City to discuss the “new Germany” and the
“new Israel.” Prior to this more formal meeting, Israel had already established a military
relationship with Germany; Germany’s military sponsorship took an additional step in
helping build Israeli-German relations by providing weapons for free.51 When Ben-
Gurion met with Adenauer, he sought additional military weapons and financial support
to develop the Negev - which he received. However, the Israeli public remained unready
to develop diplomatic relations with Germany. Segev recounts this: “Back in Israel,
Ben-Gurion was greeted with angry editorials ... and with a no-confidence motion in the
Knesset. Again ... it was argued that Ben-Gurion’s German policy constituted a gross
insult to the victims of the Holocaust.”52
Ben-Gurion remained largely unconcerned, as he already knew that Adolf
Eichmann would soon arrive in Israel, courtesy of the diligent tracking efforts of the
Mossad. The Eichmann trial served to moderate anti-German sentiment in Israel. It
forced many people to confront their memories and brought the horrors of the Holocaust
to the forefront of social consciousness in a way that had not yet occurred. Although the
trial raised ethical issues by the likes of Martin Buber, who objected to the victim being
50 Ibid.,85-86. As it so happened, very few of the survivors ever saw any o f these funds, as the money found its ways into the various pockets of prominent Jewish leaders and their pet projects, but this is a separate issue. 51 Segev,303. 52 Ibid.,320.
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the judge amongst other things, the trial marked a shift in the way the Israeli public
confronted the Holocaust.53
Still, Israel’s complex relations with Germany remained unofficial. With time,
the two countries developed stronger economic, military, and diplomatic ties. By the
1980s, Germany was a country whose economic, geopolitical, and military importance to
Israel was second only to that of the United States, though both Germany and Israel took
care not to say that they had “normal” relations. Israel formally received the German
chancellor in 1983.54
The German-Israeli conciliation process was largely a top down affair, initiated
and instituted by those in positions of power. As a result, true conciliation between
Jewish-Israelis and Germans is still somewhat incomplete from a grass-roots perspective.
It remains very much a work in progress. There are multiple programs, educational
exchanges, religious and cultural exchanges, and dialogues between Germans and Israelis
that work toward reconciling attitudes and emotions and building relationships at a
grassroots level between the two nations.
In some respects, the idea that Germany and Israel will ever have relations not
based on German Holocaust guilt and Jewish-Israelis’ victimhood seems unfathomable.
Israeli identity and politics have become so intertwined with the Holocaust that it would
require a political and social death and rebirth to change such a dynamic.
53 Ibid.,329. 54 Ibid.,319-320, 365-366.
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Cycles of Violence: Germans, Jews, and Palestinians
As outlined in psychoanalytic theory, several defense mechanisms come into play
in the transmission of trauma and the way these traumas affect behavior. Below, I
consider the mechanisms of repetition compulsion and displaced aggression, and then I
note how they play out in the Israeli-Palestinian context. I hold, with Howard Stein, the
premise that relationships can “embody and personify internal, but disavowed, feelings,
unconscious affects, fantasies.”55
Repetition Compulsion
Vamik Volkan tells us that:
Repetition compulsion is a clinical phenomenon that concerns a general tendency in all human beings to repeat [emphasis mine] painful experiences [at an attempt at mastery]. It occurs in groups as well as in individuals, but in social situations we sometimes see the defenses erected against [emphasis mine] repetition rather than repetition itself. When mourning does not take place after a change or loss, its absence becomes a political force in itself, and individuals or groups are compelled to repeat those acts that first produced the need to mourn. When mourning is uncomplicated, however, its completion makes it possible to accept new conditions realistically.56
Repetition compulsion - as defined above - and as relevant to the discussion of how the
memory of persecution dining the Holocaust influences attitudes and behaviors towards
Palestinians, manifests itself in two ways. These responses are best thought of as
opposite sides of the same coin: the unconscious compulsion to recreate the past in order
to master it; and strong defenses erected to prevent such reoccurrences from happening.
55 Stein: 504. 56 Vamik D. Volkan,The Need to Have Enemies & Allies (London: Jason Aronson Inc., 1988), 178.
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Perhaps a particularly salient example of repetition compulsion can be observed
in the Zionist paradox that Israel exemplifies today. Despite having brought the state of
Israel into existence, the central yearning of Zionism - that of creating what might be
\ called the “new Jew” - never manifested itself. As Segev notes:
The “new man” that Zionism wished to create would be the opposite of the persecuted and submissive “old Jew” ... The new Zionist society would represent creative, socialist, secular progress, imbue its children with sovereign pride and with the ability to defend themselves and their honor.57
However, this “new Jew” was clearly a hollow construction without substance,
without a history. Segev points out that the new immigrants to Israel “exhibited little
enthusiasm for trading their existing culture and identities as Jews” for such a
“hypothetical• identity.” • c o An identity that was two thousand years in the making would
not be left behind so quickly, and with time, the realities of the Jewish state began to
mirror the very historical themes that Zionists had sought desperately to leave behind.
The reality became and remains that Israel is dependent. Ultimately, Israel
depends upon outside nations and individuals for its existence. Israel had become an
isolated country, not a nation like any other of which the Zionists dreamed.59 Because
Israel’s creation came at a high cost to the Palestinian population, and largely because of
the lack of integration and normalized relationships between Palestinians and Jews, Israel
ironically remains far from one of the safest places for Jews to reside. Many surrounding
nations hate and resent the country. Segev believes that today, “there are many places in
Segev,515. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid.
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the world where Jews are safer than in Israel,”60 although Israel is still pitched to the
world as the ultimate safe haven for Jews. One must wonder how Israeli foreign policy
could be as provocative and short-sighted as it frequently is; especially considering the
potentially high cost this creates for its population. The irony is that in the attempts to
protect through aggressive offensive and defensive behavior, Israel’s security may
actually be threatened because of the reactions their militaristic responses gamer.
Ellis questions, “Have we as Jews become an oppressor nation? Have the lessons
of the Holocaust, which we teach religiously to everyone in the world, been lost to us?”61
It seems that repetition compulsion is most apparent in the barriers that Israel tries to
erect against repeating the past. But the result is still problematic: Israel inadvertently
directs more hatred at itself, and secondly, Israel risks taking on the role of the oppressor.
However, repetition compulsion is not the only significant psychological force that may
be at work.
Displacement of Aggression
DeLamater, Michener, and Schwartz, in their text, Social Psychology, define
displacement as “the release of pent-up anger in the form of aggression against a target
other than the original cause of anger.”62 This happens when the victim cannot exact
revenge against the original perpetrator. Often the unavailability or power of the
tormentor precludes the victim’s ability to exact revenge. The victim then displaces
aggression onto targets perceived as weak and unable to retaliate, and frequently onto
60 Ibid.,514. 61 Ellis, Out of the Ashes, 1 62 J.D. DeLamater H.A. Michener, & S.H. Schwartz, Social Psychology (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986), 314.
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socially sanctioned targets - people who are negatively stereotyped such that aggression
against them feels justified.63 The humiliation and shame that Germans experienced with
their defeat during World War I and with the Treaty of Versailles became central and
reactionary reference points for the construction of Nazi selfhood.64 Bar-On has noted
the high likelihood of displaced aggression developing when a dramatic difference in
power exists and when the oppressed depends upon the perpetrator(s). When this
happens, as Bar-On points out,
The oppressed may ... tend to identify with the oppressor and displace their own aggression on weaker groups or individuals. This relationship becomes even more complicated as the relationship between the aggressor and the victim may have originally been mixed dependency or symbiosis, even with love (or intended love).65
Bar-On compares this to instances of sexual or physical abuse in the family unit. He
notes that rarely does a child act out against the parent that abuses him or her because of
the power dynamic, dependency on the parent, and mixed feelings of love and affection.
As any child psychologist can attest, a child’s greatest fear is that of being ignored by the
caregivers. The child welcomes engagement - even aggressive engagement - over
indifference and abandonment. Of course, Bar-On notes, such a dynamic possesses
destructive and harmful long-term repercussions for the child:
The aggression of the parent... shatters the basic assumptions of the child (Janoff-Bulman, 1992) concerning trust, positive self-esteem, the benevolence of the world and their own right for unconditional love. The child has no way to move out of this double bind. He or she can neither give up the love, nor move away from or retaliate against the aggression.66
63 Ibid. 64 Stein, "The Holocaust, the Self, and the Question o f Wholeness: A Response to Lewin," 506. 65 Bar-On: 11. 66 Ibid.
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Jews were shattered in much the same way during the Second World War. For Jews who
were especially integrated into their respective societies, the betrayal felt even more
painful due to the nature of dehumanization in the concentration camps, which
psychologist Dave Grossman describes as “highly personal, [death on a] face-to-face
basis.”67 He explains further, stating, “The victims of these camps had to look their
sadistic killers in the face and know that another human being denied their humanity and
hated them enough to personally slaughter them, their families, and their race.”68
In his case study, Bar-On notes that the majority of Jews did not seek revenge
against Germans after the end of the Second World War, despite their many opportunities
to do so. Bar-On discusses two possible reasons. First, Jews chose to take the moral high
ground by later exhibiting revenge in socially acceptable ways: by boycotting German
products and refusing to ever step foot upon Germany again. However, as a
psychologist, Bar-On suggests a second, different conclusion: displaced aggression. He
proposes that:
Nazi aggression, internalized [by Jews] during the Holocaust, did not vanish. It is still there, deep inside the victims, in their individual and collective memory, deep under a shield of defenses and inhibitions searching for opportunities to express itself, even if [it] has to come out in distorted and displaced forms, times and locations.69
Narratives and perspectives regarding the conflicting dynamics between Jews and
Palestinians abound. Bar-On concludes that in the current situation, Jews dominate by
“relating toward the Palestinian with indifference, or in a patronizing and stereotypical
way, using at times extensive aggression to humiliate and oppress them as a collective in
67 Lt. Col. Dave Grossman,On Killing (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1995), 78. 68 Ibid.,79. 69 Bar-On: 10.
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Israel and the Palestinian territories.”70 Further explicating the pattern of displaced
aggression that he observed in the Jewish-Palestinian dynamic, Bar-On writes, “The
combination of the severe use by the Jewish-Israelis of verbal and physical power against
the Palestinians, compared to the lack [emphasis mine] of similar passion and activity
against the Germans after the war, suggests a hidden process of displacement of
aggression.”71
Palestinians have often asked in enraged disbelief how “a state that claims to be
the refuge of the descendants of the people who had such a horrible experience in human
history [can] advocate or support the oppression of any other people.”72 The theory of
displaced aggression goes a long way in helping explain why. Relating to this topic, Ellis
writes:
Instead of the healing and normalization of the Jewish condition, the force of Israel has deepened our wounds. In a paradoxical way, by externalizing our pain and inflicting it on another people, we are becoming more distant from the sources and resources of our own possible healing ... What the Nazis had not succeeded in accomplishing - the undermining at a fundamental level of the very essence of what it means to be Jewish - we as Jews have embarked upon. I witnessed this in the hospitals and in the streets where Palestinians, struggling to assert their own dignity, were being systematically beaten, expelled and murdered by those who had suffered this indignity less than fifty years earlier.73
The horrific massacres of peaceful Palestinians from the village of Deir Yassin (which is,
perhaps appropriately, visible from Yad Vashem), as well as the brutal and horrific
massacres at Sabra and Shatila - and many other incidents smaller in scope but not in
horror - offer evidence of displaced aggression. Acknowledging and understanding the
70 Ibid.: 19. 71 Ibid. 72 Pogrund, ed.,150. 73 Ellis, Out of the Ashes, 156.
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tragic Jewish history that feeds displaced aggression becomes necessary in order to
recognize the depth of their destructive proclivity and in order not to demonize Jewish-
Israelis for their acts of brutality. This does not intend to absolve Israel’s responsibility.
Rather, it implies that Israel cannot be left to its own devices, but should be carefully
monitored by influential third parties like the United States and European states.
Mourning. Healing, and Identity Construction
Volkan writes that “in psycho-political terminology, chosen traumas are not
mourned.”74 This may happen because a group feels:
too humiliated, angry, or helpless to mourn its chosen trauma, and so instead passes on the memory ... ethnic identity evolves through history, as the inability to mourn the chosen trauma influences the social and political ideologies of the particular group.75
Volkan further states that the conscious and unconscious desire to “repair what has been
done to their ancestors” passes down from generation to generation, as they seek “to
release themselves from the burden of humiliation that is now part of their identity.”76
Rafael Moses (1984, 1993), an Israeli psychoanalyst, suggests that Israelis have
responded to the Holocaust with a deep sense of shame and denial.77 Volkan discusses
this issue of denial in some depth, referencing the following example as evidence of this
phenomenon: “After their arrival in the 1940s, survivors had been immediately treated
for depression and other mental disorders in psychiatric hospitals. Incredibly, however,
many of these patients’ official files did not even mention that they were Holocaust
74Volkan, "On 'Chosen Trauma'." 75 Vamik D. Volkan, ed.,The Third Reich in the Unconscious, 13. 76 Volkan, "On 'Chosen Trauma'," 13. 77 R. Moses,Persistent Shadows of the Holocaust: The Meaning to Those Not Directly Affected (Madison: CT: International Universities Press, 1993), 130.
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victims.”78 Israeli psychologist, Judith Stem (2000) suggests that the Holocaust survivors
projected an image of weakness that threatened the new state’s need to perceive its
citizens as victors and heroes during its early days. Israelis, and the new state, found it
“far easier ... to identify with the perceived hero than with the victim of total
depersonalization whose main ‘achievement’ had been to stay alive in situations of
almost inconceivable horror.”79 The people did not desire nor promote the label of
victim.
The findings of Dan Bar-On’s students seem to support this assessment
concerning the response of Israelis to the Holocaust during the early years of the Israeli
state. They conducted an analysis of who was permitted to give a personal account on
Holocaust Day in Israel from the 1950s to the 1990s. Bar-On, sharing their findings,
says, “In the first years only the ghetto fighters could talk about their experiences,” but
“over the years, through the seventies, other survivors’ accounts were given in public ...
[T]he children of the survivors and their grandchildren [were permitted to speak starting]
in the nineties.” This study also describes the increasing personalization of the
commemorative process. However, this personalization did not and does not necessarily
provide individuals with new avenues in which to mourn or bring closure to the past, but
it seems rather a mechanism of reinforcing the transmission of the Holocaust as a chosen
trauma. Mourning remains an essential process in creating a cohesive sense of self as
well as a means of creating overall well-being. Stein writes:
Throughout life, we lose contexts, persons, ideals, and erstwhile selves (e.g., marital, occupational, cohort, ritual, health). Over their collective
78 Vamik D. Volkan, ed., The Third Reich in the Unconscious, 13. 79 J. Stem, "Personal Communication with V.D. Volkan," (2000). 80 Dan Bar-On, "Interview by Author," (Be'er Sheva University, 6 February 2006).
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history (that is mutual identification), groups lose battles, wars, territories, honor, crops, and so forth. These often become incorporated into group notions of selfhood. Our ability to change our selves, or our becoming old selves, depends on how we respond to the change and loss. Healing by splitting/doubling is a hallmark of the “paranoid-schizoid” position; healing by mourning is a hallmark of the “depressive” position (Klein 1946). They lead to altogether different selves and different experiences of the inner and outer worlds alike.81
Volkan discusses the particular challenges that arise in mourning the Holocaust. He finds
difficulty integrating the memory of the Holocaust with other memories that inevitably
comprise an individual’s experiences in life. He writes that “the affects and meanings
contained in [the memories] are simply too immense to be made into remembrance
formations.” Completion of the “mourning process would require forgiving and
forgetting, which would induce the unbearable anxiety that the horror, with its assault to
the sense of self, might then recur.” He then references Rafael Moses’ (1984) study that
concluded that “the loss of security in the Holocaust survivors’ interpersonal world
reflects the fact that for these victims, it seems better to cling to the ‘memory’ and be
perennially on guard” - much like militaristic culture that is today a defining attribute of
Israeli society.82
Stem writes that many in Israel “have built their entire personal and group
identities around survivorship and historical commemoration of the Holocaust, an effort
at mastery by turning passive into active,” writes Stem. These people use the death camp
as “a bond of obligation and loyalty to their children never to forget.”83 Furthermore,
Volkan states that the desire and need for group cohesion can be particularly detrimental
to the process of mourning and healing:
81 Stein, "The Holocaust, the Self, and the Question o f Wholeness: A Response to Lewin," 505. 82 Vamik D. Volkan, ed., The Third Reich in the Unconscious,55-56. 83 Stein, "The Holocaust, the Self, and the Question of Wholeness: A Response to Lewin," 500.
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When a loss is too great to be mourned, the survivor forms a closer identification with others in the large group who have lived through similar experiences, collectively thwarting the mourning process; indeed, the large-group cohesion that must be maintained to survive a massive trauma essentially demands that no mourning take place. If survivors truly mourn their losses, they will be freed from the intense relationship with the lost objects’ representations that characterizes melancholia and perennial mourning. But in achieving this disengagement, those individuals will also separate themselves from the others in the group who remain attached to those representations in the common state of complicated mourning. Thus endeavoring to mourn alone almost necessarily induces guilt and a sense of loneliness.84
This provides yet another reason for the difficulty Israelis find in completing the
mourning process; this completion would largely deconstruct their national and personal
identity, and possibly their sense of legitimacy as well. Paul Scham states, “If one of the
main reasons for Israel to exist centers around the Holocaust, then demythologizing it is
or dangerous for many towards nullifying the reason why Israel should exist.” This
explains Israel’s highly defensive posturing as an attempt at self-preservation.
Because of Israel’s defensive posturing, the nation overlooks the essential
message that many nations and human rights groups advocate, that all must adopt high
human rights standards. Segev notes that the lessons of the Holocaust have come to
reinforce a limited and destructive vision, namely that “the Holocaust require[s] the
existence of a [militaristically] strong Israel and that the failure of the world to save the
Jewish people during World War II disqualifies it from reminding Israel of moral
imperatives, including respect for human rights.” This destructive vision holds that
Israel can only protect itself by not allowing the vulnerability that accompanies
cooperation with other nations. Eugene Weiner notes the paradox of Israel, stating:
84 Vamik D. Volkan, ed.,The Third Reich in the Unconscious,56. 85 Pogrund, ed.,162. 86 Segev,517.
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Israel is both a Jewish and a democratic state. It is an ethnically Jewish state and must remain so in the eyes of the majority of its citizens ... Arab citizens of Israel have equal rights to vote and to governmental benefits, Jewish citizens are in many ways given preferential treatment... This constitutes a moral and ethical problem [on a multitude of levels, because], theoretically, in a democratic society all citizens should be related to equally by the state regardless of race, creed, gender, or ethnic origin.• • 87
Israel remains a country rife with contradictions on political, social, religious, ethical, and
psychological levels.
Context and Genocidal Behavior
Scholars and observers from a cross section of fields have studied the origins of
the Holocaust and have analyzed what it reveals about our species. These fields include
anthropology, philosophy, political science, economics, sociology, history, and
psychoanalysis as well as other psychology-related approaches. Piecing together the
origins of the Holocaust warrants and necessitates such a multidisciplinary approach,
because, as Bar-On states, what happened in the Holocaust represented:
a break in each one of the disciplines. And not only in the disciplines, but in the total understanding which we all tended to believe: that the more societies become educated, the more societies will become modernized, these kinds of things will not be possible ... on the religious level, on the philosophical level, on the scientific level - whichever domain you go into ... scientists prepared and planned it and participated in it. Physicians, philosophers were a part of it. Religious people helped [the Nazis].88
As described below, watershed experiments like those created by social scientists
Stanley Milgram, Solomon Asch, and Philip Zimbardo represent only a few of the many
important experiments and studies that have shed light on some of the social-
87 Weiner, ed.,44. 88 Bar-On, "Interview by Author."
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psychological components that made average people complicit in the Holocaust. Each of
these experiments illustrates in different ways the power that situation and context have
over the individual; the situations and contexts we find ourselves in may dictate more of
our actions than we ever realized.
Obedience to Authority
A son of a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe, Stanley Milgrim grew up in
the 1930s, and as a child he paid close attention to how events unfolded in Nazi
Germany, because his father had family living in Europe at the time. fiO This had a
profound impact on his academic pursuits. As Milgram’s wife Margaret wrote:
With ... Stanley’s interest in news and history, plus his strong Jewish identity ... his deep concern about the Holocaust... led to his best known research - obedience to authority. He wondered, as did many people, about Germany, a country in which so many Jews were integrated into society as professionals and businessmen. Who were all the men who pushed the levers to let the gas into the chambers of Auschwitz and Dachau? It was not just one crazy man.90
Milgram’s famous experiment, designed to test what might be called pathological
obedience, employed a simple setup. The subjects of the experiment (who of course did
not know they were the subjects) agreed to participate in a learning experiment that
involved electrically shocking another individual (secretly an actor). The experiment
sought to discover “how far a person will proceed in a concrete and measurable situation
89 Alexandra Milgram, "Personal View of Stanley Milgram," inObedience to Authority Current Perspectives on the Milgram Paradigm, ed. Thomas Blass (London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000),
” Ibid.
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in which he is ordered to inflict increasing pain on a protesting victim. At what point will
the subject refuse to obey the experimenter?”91
Milgram’s findings established time and time again that “despite the fact the
many subjects experience stress, despite the fact that many protest to the experimenter, a
substantial proportion continue to the last [lethal] shock on the generator.”92 The subjects
in the experiment were men and women who came from all sectors of society. It is safe
to assume that they represented the average individual. They were “good” people, with
morals and values. However, he noted that “many subjects will obey the experimenter no
matter how vehement the pleading of the person being shocked, no matter how painful
the shocks seem to be, and no matter how much the victim pleads to be let out.”93 How
then could their actions be explained?
Milgram attributes their actions to a shift in the subject’s sense of responsibility-
the subject no longer came to see him or herself as responsible for his or her own actions,
divesting “himself of responsibility by attributing all initiatives to the experimenter, a
legitimate authority ... The disappearance of a sense of responsibility [or entering the
agentic state] is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.”94 In the
agentic state, the subject’s moral sensitivities take on a different focus, which is one
explanation of why otherwise “moral” people willingly participate in harming another
person; the subject’s “moral concern ... shifts to a consideration of how well he is living
up to the expectations that the authority has of him.”95
91 Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority (New York: HarperPerennial, 1969), 3-4. 92 Ibid.,5 93 Ibid. 94 Ibid.,8 9 5 T U . J
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The Binding Power of Conformity
The power of conformity - as Solomon Asch proved in 1951 - proves itself a
nearly indomitable force. Asch conducted his experiment with college students, whom
he required to estimate lines of equal and different lengths. Interestingly, if the subjects
heard others before them give the wrong answer unanimously, they would proceed to
answer incorrectly. As Asch discovered, people will ignore their own senses in order to
conform to the collective norm.96 While commenting on the statistics from the
experiment, McCarthy raises a valid concern: “If 35 percent of those students conformed
to group opinion in unambiguous matters and in direct contradiction of the evidence of
their own eyes, how much more must we fear blind following in ambiguous
circumstances?”97
Situational Power and Ambiguous Roles
Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues designed and implemented the Stanford
Prison Experiment (1971), which clearly demonstrated the power with which ambiguous
situations can overwhelm personality, “Demonstrating the evil that good people can be
readily induced into doing to other good people within the context of socially approved
roles, rules, and norms, a legitimizing ideology, and institutional support that transcends
individual agency.”98 The Stanford Prison Experiment forayed into the psychology of
96 Sarah J. McCarthy, "Why Johnny Can't Disobey,"Culture, in Communication and Conflict Readings in Intercultural Relations, ed. Gary R. Weaver (Boston: Pearson Publishing, 2000), 268. 97 Ibid. 98 Thomas Blass, ed., Obedience to Authority Current Perspectives on the Milgram Paradigm (Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000), 194.
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prison life. More than 70 individuals applied to be involved in the experiment. The
researchers screened the individuals to ensure that only physically and emotionally stable
individuals participated. In the end 24 college students participated in the experiment.
Zimbardo describes them as “an average group of healthy, intelligent, middle-class
males.”99 The young men were divided into two groups, some assigned to be guards, the
others assigned to be prisoners. The experiment had been planned to go the length of two
weeks but was ended only six days after beginning. Zimbardo explains that “in only a
few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed
signs of extreme stress.” 100 The boys had been screened in advance for personality
disorders; the participants had been deemed healthy and stable individuals.101
The Zimbardo prison experiment exhibited the psychology of dehumanization,
showing that within a short period of time these individuals became either pathologically
powerless prisoners or sadistic prison guards. Furthermore, the Stanford Prison
Experiment established that “ordinary people could be led to engage in antisocial acts by
putting them into situations in which they feel anonymous or in which they could
perceive others in ways that made them less than human, as enemies or objects.”103 It did
not take long for these “healthy” individuals to become victims or aggressors.
These experiments of Milgram, Asch, and Zimbardo have profound implications
for understanding the average person’s capability for brutality. Although these
experiments have limitations, they successfully illustrate that when placed in an
99 Philip Zimbardo, The Stanford Prison Experiment: A Simulation Study o f Prison Psyc/jo/ogyfexperiment online, 1999, accessed 9 July 2006); available from http://www.prisonexp.org/. 100 Ibid.(accessed). 101 Ibid.(accessed). 102 Blass, ed., Obedience to Authority Current Perspectives on the Milgram Paradigm,202. 103 Ibid.,203.
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unfamiliar situation with ambiguous roles, rules, and asymmetrical power balances -
even without the presence of propaganda, history, animosity and other factors that can
lead to further dehumanization - good, average people can harm one another out of the
desire to follow rules, to meet the expectations of authority figures, and to conform.
Psvchodvnamics and Holocaust Meanings
Stein suggests that the ultimate lesson in the fragmentation of the self belongs to
the Holocaust. “Conceptuality is all we are, all we can hope to be. We solve
fragmentation by fragmentation,” writes Stein,104 opposing Carroll Lewin’s existential
situationalist position and conclusions in her article, “Negotiated Selves in the
Holocaust.” Lewin writes:
The advantage to a perspective that pricks the illusion of the wholeness of the self, and acknowledges not the unitary but the contextualized aspects of the self... foreshorten[s] the distance between the participants in the Holocaust and “ordinary” people ... [this] increase[s] awareness of conditions fostering genocidal behavior.1 5
Stein challenges aspects of this conclusion, stating, “It is not only what contexts do to us
that matters, but what we do with our contexts that also counts - even with the Holocaust.
Humans not only adapt to situations, but they adapt to situations with a repertory of
feelings, values, fantasies, and conflicts.”106 Without a doubt people can learn much
from understanding how the contexts of situations influence our thinking, decision
making, actions, and inactions. Psychologists and social scientists have done much to
further such understanding. Ironically, however, if one becomes prisoner to the whim of
104 Stein, “The Holocaust, the Self, and the Question o f Wholeness: A Response to Lewin,” 488. 105 Carroll Lewin, "Negotiated Selves in the Holocaust,"Ethos 21, no. 3 (1993): 312. 106 Stein, "The Holocaust, the Self, and the Question of Wholeness: A Response to Lewin," 494.
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context, one gains another mechanism to distance one’s self from and deny tendencies
and capacities that one might rather ignore. Stein inquires, “If self is relative to,
derivative from, context, then to what is context relative? Only an endless regress of
historical antecedents?” He answers that:
People create and unconsciously accept into their psyches via identification and adaptation (Parin 1988), those contexts in which they are multiple, inconsistent, and context-dependent selves ... that is, people often ascribe to their situations their own disavowed motivation (e.g., the common excuse of “only following orders” in death camps and bureaucracies worldwide).107
Any analysis of the Holocaust contains limitations, as Stein acknowledges.108 However,
Stein’s analysis contributes much to his compilation and conceptualization of the
underlying psychic forces and motivations behind the Holocaust - placing it well into the
realm of the everyday.
Demythologizing the Holocaust
While sitting with Dan Bar-On at Be’er Sheva University, I asked him what the
Holocaust represents to him. “I think the Holocaust represents many things,” he said.
“Not one thing. First of all, it’s a tremendous loss of human lives - innocent human lives
- children, families.” He continued, “[It was] an unbelievable number, and [done] in an
unbelievably brutal way, which threatened the existence of the Jewish people at that time
along with other minorities, but mainly the Jewish people.” Here he paused for a
moment before continuing: “But I think the Holocaust is also a serious crisis in Western
civilization. Maybe the crisis in Western civilization. It brought down the assumption
107 Ibid.: 504. 108 Ibid.: 487.
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that progress means that people become better ... It actually shows that progress only
means that the means change.”109
Anthropologist Howard Stein posed the question, “What is the measure of man in
the face of the Holocaust... is the Holocaust an aberration of a particular culture, a
particular time, or can it tell us about ourselves, everywhere?”110 He later suggests that
“nothing in the Holocaust should surprise us, as it is a part of being human.”111 On a
similar note, Dan Bar-On remarks about his work with children whose parents were
deeply involved in the Nazi regime:
If you really learn who were the perpetrators - which was part of my subject matter - you find out that there were no monsters, almost no monsters. Most of them were regular human beings, who loved their wives and their children and were mass murderers at the same time.112
In many respects, this is one of the most difficult things to realize. Stein notes that “the
almost universal response to the Holocaust has been to regard it as alien, bizarre, exotic,
exceptional - that is, to distance it from the ordinary, the usual of the human
condition.”113 Dan Bar-On explains perhaps one of the major reasons for this:
[The Holocaust] ... means that you have no defense in terms of how you can estimate people around you. Can youreally be sure that your neighbor will not turn one day against you when the conditions will enable it? We became much more defenseless, in a way, and there is no way to screen out such people, because it is not such people Almost... every person can become under certain conditions a rescuer, under other conditions a perpetrator. So, I think that these are notions which are very difficult for humans to tolerate. Most of us try to repress it. What the Holocaust created in most human beings is a lot o f repression. They can’t deal with all o f the aspects o f what the Holocaust means for humanity
109 Professor Dan Bar-On of Be’er Sheva University, interview by author, 6 February 2006. 110 Stein, "The Holocaust, the Self, and the Question of Wholeness: A Response to Lewin," 486. 111 Ibid.: 489. 112 Bar-On, "Interview by Author." 113 Stein, "The Holocaust, the Self, and the Question o f Wholeness: A Response to Lewin," 489-490.
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[emphasis mine]. Or when they can accept it, they become very depressed.114
The Holocaust remains distinctly beyond comparison in several ways. The pain
and personal anguish of those who suffered and died in the Holocaust can never be
undone, and the loss of these individuals - the loss of their lives and unique selves, the
loss of their talents and contributions to their friends and families, society, and the greater
Jewish community, can never be replaced. The unfolding of events leading up to and
during the Holocaust can neither be exactly relived nor recreated. The Holocaust, in
these ways, perseveres as tragically unique.
Nevertheless, the following are not unique: discrimination, dehumanization,
torture, mass killings, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Genocides have occurred almost
everywhere and have been committed by almost every people: the genocide of Native
Americans by European settlers and soldiers supported and implemented by United
States government policy; the genocide of the Armenians by the Turks; the Cambodians
by the Khmer Rouge; the genocide of the Tutsi by the Hutu in Rwanda; the genocide of
Bosnian Muslims by the Serbians; and most recently the ongoing genocide in Darfur.
These examples show that genocide does not belong indigenously to one religion, people,
culture, or country. The unfolding of a particular genocide depends upon the place,
society, culture, and region in which it occurs. Yet, history demonstrates that genocide -
in and of itself - is an unfortunate human proclivity. In order to prevent it, one must
regard and acknowledge it as such.
114 Bar-On, "Interview by Author."
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Summary
I have outlined, with the assistance of several prominent scholars, my assertion
that Jewish-Israeli society has yet to fully reconcile with their Holocaust past. In this
chapter, I have discussed the different factors that have influenced the national
consciousness, which has left a large portion of Israeli society expressing defensiveness,
paranoia, and anger particularly in their relationship with Arabs and Palestinians, which
has not been helped by violent attacks from their Arab and Palestinian neighbors. This
serves only to exacerbate the preexisting trauma impressed upon Israeli society by the
Holocaust. I have also discussed how these emotive qualities determine the way Israel
relates to the Palestinians, further contributing to the intractability of the conflict.
Many genocides have occurred throughout the centuries. Scholars who specialize
in these studies, have made the realization that genocidal proclivities are not relegated to
a specific place, people, or religion.115 As Bronya, a historian and a former ghetto fighter
told me:
So often people say that we can’t understand the Holocaust. But we can understand. We must understand why it is that it happened. We have to understand. People who were murdered - they don’t exist anymore, and we can do nothing to bring them back. But you can maybe prevent in the future such actions.116
The reality that past and current Israeli policy, as well as the Jewish elite around
the world, use the Holocaust politically as described by Finkelstein, only exacerbates the
difficulty of letting go of the past. Finkelstein convincingly argues that in addition to
debasing the actual experiences of the Holocaust victims, it promotes hatred of Israel. In
115 Ervin Staub, The Roots o f Evil: The Origins o f Genocide and Other Group Violence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 116 Bronya, interview by author, tape recording, Jerusalem, Israel, 30 January 2006.
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essence it fuels anti-Semitism, thus jeopardizing the integrity and safety of Jewry
worldwide. It can promote further resentment of Israel and all of its policies.117 The
politicized, heavily mythologized version of the Holocaust troubles the society on a
psychological level as well. Many holocausts have occurred throughout the centuries.
By distinguishing and setting the Nazi holocaust apart as something that only the Nazis
could be capable of, we lose sight of the part within ourselves with such potential.
Before we realize what this does, we may find that we have already turned from the
oppressed into the oppressor.118
117 Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah on the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse o f History. 118 Ellis, Out o f the Ashes, 156-158.
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METHODOLOGY
Research Questions
This study seeks to contribute toward an understanding of what motivates Jewish-
Israeli activists (Holocaust survivors or descendants of Holocaust survivors) who are
working for peace, understanding, social justice, and equity with and for Palestinians in
Israel. I tried to discover any common patterns that influence these individuals, patterns
in the way they relate to the Holocaust and the way they relate to the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. Additionally, I consider how personality, upbringing, parental role-modeling,
and significant life experiences influence their involvement in peace work. Ultimately, I
endeavor to assess whether my findings indicate a different kind of personal conciliation
with the Holocaust, contrasting with the Holocaust relationship dominant among Jewish
Israelis.
The questions asked in the interviews attempted to assess development and
change in the interviewees over their lifetimes in their relationships to the Holocaust, the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Palestinians, Germany, Germans, Israel, Israeli society, and
their peace-oriented work. I also tried to determine what accounted for these
developments and changes.
44
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Research Design
In this study I employ the case-study format. Robert Yin defines a case study as
“an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life
context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly
evident.”119 This approach seemed necessary because my research was highly qualitative
(although quantitative elements may also have been present). A qualitative approach
allowed me to examine the patterns of interrelationship among many categories, whereas
a quantitative approach would consider sharply delineated relationships among a limited
set of categories.120 Yin states that “in general, case studies are [the] preferred strategy
when ‘how’ or ‘why’ questions are being posed, when the investigator has little control
over events, and when the focus is on a contemporary phenomenon within some real-life
context.”121
However, many have criticized the methodological approach using case studies.
Robert Yin notes that:
The case study has long been (and continues to be) stereotyped as a weak sibling among social science methods. Investigators who do case studies are regarded as having downgraded their academic disciplines. Case studies have similarly been denigrated as having insufficient precision (i.e., quantification), objectivity, or rigor.122
Yin goes on to discuss the strengths and the weaknesses of case studies; he proffers that
the case study design still contributes much, because of the kind of knowledge it works
with and the way it permits that knowledge to be linked, exhibiting causal relationships.
119 Robert K. Yin,Case Study Research Design and Methods, 3rd ed. (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2003), 13. 120 Grant McCracken, The Long Interview (Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1988). 121 Yin, Case Study Research Design and Methods, 1 122 Ibid.,xiii.
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He suggests the key to developing a sound methodological approach is careful and
rigorous thought. This I have tried to exercise throughout the course of this study.
Collecting the Data
I conducted 22 in-depth and open-ended interviews during the 5-week period
when I was in Israel (during January and February 2006). The interviews were
conducted one-on-one, although in one instance a husband and wife were interviewed
simultaneously. The interviews took place at locations recommended by the
interviewees, most commonly in home settings, or at a local cafe, in different cities
across Israel. Although the questions were carefully typed up and ordered on paper
which I carried with me to the interviews, they were asked and discussed in no particular
order. However, I did take care that all of the questions had been discussed before the
conclusion of the interview.
I used an open order for the questions to make the interview process as natural
and as unforced as possible. Additionally, because of the personal nature of some of the
questions, I wanted to do my best to make sure the process seemed personal, sensitive,
and not mechanical. This approach also encouraged participants to engage in a highly
personalized way, encouraging them to discuss personal memories, thoughts, and feelings
relating to the questions asked. I generally began interviews with less personal questions
and asked more personal ones as rapport developed and as the interview continued.
With the permission of the interviewees, I recorded the interviews. Thus, no part
of the conversation could be lost, and whole conversations could be accurately revisited.
One problem occurred when an interview had not recorded as it should have. The
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interviewee most graciously allowed me to return on another day to re-conduct the
interview.
The participants received basic biographical questionnaires to fill out on paper.
Participants were made aware that they could abstain from answering any question for
any reason and at any time. They also knew that the interview could be terminated at any
point if they so wished.
Selecting Participants
Upon arriving in Israel, I had two contacts that helped me begin networking to
find the individuals that I desired to interview. The basic characteristics that qualified
someone as an interviewee follow:
1) Were first-, second-, or third-generation Holocaust survivor
2) Have worked or are currently working in some capacity for understanding,
peace, social justice, and equity for/with Palestinians
Rationale
The purpose for the first qualification, that the individual be a first-, second-, or
third-generation Holocaust survivor, was to establish personal ties to the Holocaust.
Although few question the memory of the Holocaust as a part of Jewish-Israeli society in
general, I wanted to be sure that the individuals I interviewed had strong, personal
connections to this trauma. I required this qualification, because one of the underlying
questions behind the research was how their connection to the Holocaust impacted their
activism and their perception of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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The question of who qualifies as a Holocaust survivor presented itself as an issue.
The experiences of European Jewry during the Holocaust varied widely. A small number
fought in resistance movements, a huge number were taken to forced labor and
concentration camps, others were in hiding throughout, and still others were able to flee
to non-occupied countries after having lived in hiding, resisted, or escaped from
concentration or forced labor camps. The resultant experiences of these individuals do
not fall into neat categories. For the purposes of this study, I define a Holocaust survivor
as an individual who experienced Nazi occupation in some capacity between the years of
1939 - 45. Second- and third-generation Holocaust survivors are the direct descendants
of Holocaust survivors. I give careful consideration to how the sundry experiences of
these individuals during the Holocaust impacted them overall, as well as the experiences
and messages that passed down to the following generations.
The second qualification changed slightly from my original intent. Originally, I
sought to meet with individuals who were currently active in some sort of peace effort. I
later amended this to include individuals who were currently inactive in order to expand
the number of people interviewed.
Analysis Techniques
Content analysis forms a crucial part of any study, particularly those with a
qualitative nature. I used coding to assist in analyzing the transcribed interviews.
Coding, an analytical tool, highlights certain noted characteristics in distinctive ways,
which allows for greater ease in later comparisons. Coding aids particularly in data
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dissection, because it helps the investigator reflect and link data. Coding also eases the
process of reanalysis.
The case-study approach employed here is largely explanatory in nature. By Yin’s
definition, to “explain a phenomenon is to stipulate a presumed set of causal links about
i j ' t it.” Yin notes that narrative form often best serves this purpose. Because narratives
are not necessarily “precise” or “objective,” such approaches often achieve the most
when “the explanations have reflected some theoretically significant propositions ... the
causal link may reflect critical insights into public policy process or social science theory
... which can lead to future recommendations.”124 Accordingly, I attempt to discuss the
transcripts in terms of the psychosocial theories already described above. After
considering the interview data, I closely examined patterns that emerged in the data from
each interview, and I noted when they demonstrated or failed to demonstrate relevant
social science theories. I conclude this study by evaluating the light my findings shed on
the motivations of these Jewish-Israelis.
The analysis consisted of three integral stages. First, I reviewed and transcribed
all relevant material gleaned from the interviews. Next, salient themes and patterns
emerged into which I organized the responses. Here I used a combination of inductive
and deductive analysis to compare the data to theoretical assumptions underlying this
study, in addition to considering patterns that arose naturally. Participant responses then
underwent analysis from multiple vantage points which included: the affective (relating
to feelings and emotions), the cognitive (perceptual and reason-oriented responses), and
123 Ibid.,120. 124 Ibid.
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the behavioral (actions and reactions).125 This allowed the assessment and comparison of
the responses on a functional level, allowing for patterns between interviewees among
correlates such as these to emerge. Ultimately, this made it easier to contrast responses
between interviewees, enabling a more complex understanding of the significance of their
responses. I arranged the responses of the interviewees to different questions in matrices
to assist in informational review and to allow comparative analysis among the responses.
Challenges and Limitations
The complex subjects and subject matter of this study dictate its primarily
qualitative approach; its approach allows better understanding of the connection between
the personal, familial and social aspects involved in forming individual attitudes and
perceptions. Realizing that the scope and breadth of the questions asked would largely
determine the responses, and understanding the need to observe whether significant and
meaningful trends exist, I sought to carefully construct a list of questions to help elicit in-
depth and informative responses. However, some participants chose not to answer the
questions in the same way or seemed reticent to speak at length about certain topics.
Although this occurrence was the exception and not the rule, undoubtedly small gaps will
persist in ability to fully compare participant responses.
125 The analytical design that Dr. Jadallah employed in her dissertation influenced the way I analyzed my data. Please see: Alma Abdul-Hadi Jadallah, “Reflection on Practice: The Impact o f 9/11 on Conflict Resolvers " (Doctoral Dissertation, George Mason University, 2006), 66.
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Language Barrier
Because I am not fluent in Hebrew, I depended upon the ability of the people I
interviewed to understand my questions and express themselves in English. This means
that they may not have always been able to express their thoughts and feelings accurately,
or they may not have always understood nuances. In order to compensate, I repeated
questions in different ways, and from these multiple responses on the same topics, I was
able to develop as accurate a sense as possible of what the interviewees intended.
Additional challenges I faced while in Israel were the limited time frame and
resources to meet and interview willing and qualified individuals. My objective was to
interview 20 qualifying individuals. While I did interview 22 individuals, only 18
individuals qualified to participate in this study. Regarding the four other individuals:
one was not a Holocaust survivor, and the other three were descendants of Holocaust
survivors but not active in any peace efforts with or for Palestinians.
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A RELATIONAL APPROACH TO THE HOLOCAUST
“How can they say that?” The elderly man’s voice quivered with anger and he
seemed on the verge of tears. “How can they deny the Holocaust and say that it never
happened?” I sat with a group of Holocaust survivors in a conference room in the
basement of Washington D.C.’s Holocaust museum. The survivors talked over lunch
about the recent Iranian president’s Holocaust denials, something that understandably
evoked much anger in the group. They could not fathom why the Iranian president would
make such statements.
I went there that day to speak with survivors involved in peace-oriented activities.
Before leaving for Israel, I wanted to learn more about engaging and interviewing
Holocaust survivors. At this luncheon for Holocaust survivors, one woman spoke out
against the on-going genocide in Darfur. I sat and chatted with her for awhile. She spoke
about the importance of Jews denouncing genocide. I wanted to inquire about the
Palestinians, but I felt that the environment forbade it. Moment’s earlier, everyone’s
upset about the “Middle-Eastern terrorists” and the “evils of Islam” suggested the
response my inquiry would likely receive; there was no room to speak of the Palestinians.
Also, I did not relish the prospect of upsetting her or of getting kicked out of the luncheon
for putting provocative questions to a Holocaust survivor.
52
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The attitudes of these American survivors mirror those of the general public, as
well as most Holocaust survivors, in Israel. This initial experience contrasted starkly
with the perspectives of the anomalous peace workers I would interview in Israel, where
for most Jews, the Holocaust, as the ultimate example of Jewish victimization, justifies
and rationalizes discriminatory policies and violent actions toward Palestinians. On
earlier pages, I have already discussed the way many Jews use the memory of the
Holocaust to justify dehumanizing and devaluing Palestinians, a way of acting out past
aggressions which is exacerbated by regional power politics.
Exceptions to this, the peace workers I interviewed were extraordinary individuals
with remarkable and varied life stories and experiences. The challenge was to identify
the processes that account for this anomaly, these survivors and their descendants
working for peace and understanding with Palestinians. I hypothesized that these
individuals had taken humanistic lessons from the Holocaust as opposed to ethnocentric
lessons. I hypothesized that the survivors to be interviewed would have the following
two perspectives.
1. They would have a deep understanding and acceptance, not denial, of the
universal human capacity for destruction and violence, acknowledging this capacity in
their own country, among their own people. This understanding counters the Jewish-
Israeli mythos of victimhood which is reinforced by the media and the educational
systems and which pervades Israel. It would enable them to see others as victims and
themselves as potential perpetrators; this, in turn, would lead them to recognize the
injustices suffered by the Palestinians.
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2. This understanding of a universal human capacity for evil would enable an
attitude of reconciliation with “enemy others,” resulting in a more humanized perception
of Palestinians and of Germans, both past and present.
The majority of interviewees shared these perspectives, but the original survivors
varied in attitudes about modern-day Germany and Germans. Of the seven women
interviewed, only two, Ester and Beate, showed no hesitance about modern-day Germany
or Germans; they had visited Germany on multiple occasions and even had German
friends. The other five said that they could not bring themselves to visit Germany; they
deemed such a prospect as too traumatic. Three of these five, Veronika, Hava, and Stella,
no longer took issue with the German people, yet still could never visit Germany. The
other two, Bronya and Yona, suggested that the German culture has an inherent disease
even today, and they referred to this as the reason that they would never visit Germany.
In addition to Germany, Yona stated strongly that she will not visit Austria because the
country willingly collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War. She said:
It was a fascist party in Italy, and it did not go to such development as it did in Germany. There is something in the German people. In the circle of the reasons this mentality was one of the reasons [the Holocaust happened]. Because of this I don’t go to Germany. I never will go there. I did not go till now, and I will never go there. It is not good for me to go to Austria, because it is the same thing. They were not occupied by the Germans, but they participated in the army and the Gestapo. 26
Both Bronya and Yona are extremely well educated. One is a retired historian and the
other has a PhD in literature. Both had read extensively about World War II and both
provided sophisticated explanations for what the Germans had done, aside from cultural
features, citing historical, economic, and psychosocial explanations for the Holocaust.
126 Yona, interview by author, tape recording, Jerusalem, Israel, 30 January 2006.
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Both saw genocide as a universal human problem and both showed genuine concern and
horror at the way Israeli soldiers have treated Palestinians. After seeing the Israelis’
treatment of the Palestinians during Israel’s formative years, Bronya rejected Zionist
ideology. Also, Hava, Beate, and Veronika explicitly stated that they did not identify
with Zionism or Zionists.
I propose two explanations for these negative attitudes toward Germany and
Austria. One is the phenomenon called “stimulus pairing,” discovered by Ivan Pavlov.127
Stimulus pairing occurs when the subject forms an association between unrelated
phenomena or objects. Historically, Germany and Germans of the 1930s and 1940s were
directly correlated with the Holocaust. I suggest that the survivors’ ambivalence toward
German and Germans reveals an association carried over to the present despite the long-
ago end to the Holocaust.
The second explanation identifies a failure to fully, personally reconcile with
Germany. On this topic Ignatieff writes:
We can know something in our heads without knowing it in our guts. We can forgive people in our heads without forgiving them in our hearts. Knowledge can be propositional or dispositional. For the former to become the latter, it must be - in Freud’s phrase - “worked through.” A two-way process is involved: what we know in our heads must become something we know in our guts; what we know in our guts must become something we know in our heads. Psyche and soma, which have been divided by trauma, must be reunited again. 1 98
Perhaps even the peacebuilder survivors have not completely worked through these
issues. Apparently these individuals, like the rest of Jewish-Israeli society, at a
fundamental level, have not “worked through” the Holocaust. I am not qualified to assess
127 H.D. Kimmel, "Notes from "Pavlov's Wednesdays": Sensory Preconditioning,"American Journal of Psychology 90, no. 2 (1977). 128 Ignatieff, The Warrior's Honor, 168-169.
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whether or not those I interviewed had adequately “worked through their past.”
However, only the original survivors professed these attitudes toward Germany and
Germans; at the time of their interviews, none of the second- or third-generation
survivors had issues with Germany or Germans, although some said they had felt
ambivalent toward Germany in previous years.
After this initial analysis, I ceased to envision the survivor-peace builders
“working through” the past with Germany and the Holocaust in the same way I envision
someone removing a splinter. It appears, rather, that the Holocaust in one way or another
is a part of each of these individuals, but they relate differently to their losses than do the
Jewish-Israelis who are more security-oriented and less sympathetic to Palestinian rights
and welfare.
A relational approach might also help explain why several individuals I
interviewed were very supportive and empathetic toward Palestinians yet had never
known a Palestinian personally. Such examples counter some sociological theories such
as the contact hypothesis which emphasize the importance of interacting and establishing
relationships with minorities in order to reduce prejudice.
Object Relations Theory and the Holocaust
To develop a relational understanding of Holocaust survivors, I consulted a
psychoanalytic theory called object relations. Thomas Klee defines object relations
theory as:
a modem adaptation of psychoanalytic theory that places less emphasis on the drives of aggression and sexuality as motivational forces and more emphasis on human relationships as the primary motivational force in
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life [emphasis mine]. Object relations theorists believe that we are relationship seeking rather than pleasure seeking as Freud suggested ... Modem object relations theorists believe that humans have an innate drive to form and maintain relationships, and that this is the fundamental human need which forms a context against which other drives such as libidinal and aggressive drives gain meaning ... In summary, the term "object- relations" refers to the self-structure we internalize in early childhood, which functions as a blueprint for establishing and maintaining future relationships [emphasis mine]. Psychopathology is an expression of traumatic self-object internalizations from childhood acted out in ... current relationships.129
The Holocaust has shaped the identity and personality of Holocaust survivors and their
descendants. Essentially, these individuals have developed relationships with the
Holocaust as an object.
To speak of the Holocaust as an object is to recognize that it is not just a real
event but also an abstraction, conveyed and altered in the way individuals relate to one
another. Second- and third-generation survivors not only relate to the Holocaust as a
historical event, but also through their parents and grandparents, seeing the Holocaust in
them. In this respect not only one Holocaust exists, but thousands of Holocausts.
Second- and third-generation survivors integrate the Holocaust into their sense of self
through their relationships with their parents, through their parents’ memories of
Holocaust experiences passed on both consciously and subconsciously, and through the
influence of the Israeli educational system and other Israeli institutions.
Further explaining object relations theory, Klee states:
The child incorporates aspects of the relational environment to create a self-system, which is the core of the personality. These aspects of the relational environment, along with the genetic predispositions are literally the building blocks of the self. Because the child incorporates many
129 Dr. Thomas Klee, Object Relations Theory and Psychotherapy [website] (2005, accessed); available from http://www.objectrelations.org/orkey.htm.
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aspects of the relational environment such as parental behavior into the developing self-system, the child internalizes much of the family drama into his or her personality.130
Of course, socialization is not everything. People approach relationships and life with
unique personalities. As Klee notes:
We come into the world with a genetic encoding that sets the stage for whom we will become ... The self-system develops out of genetic predispositions such as temperament that we bring into the world with us. This accounts for roughly half of who we are. The other half comes from our interactions with the world around us, the most significant of those interactions occurring during the first two years of life, which is when the self-system develops.131
I used object relations theory to form my analytical approach because this theory allows
us to understand the Jewish-Israeli peacebuilders in relational terms. Using this theory,
we can appreciate the significance the interviewees attribute to the Holocaust and to
treatment of Palestinians. We can contrast the various attributed meanings themselves
as well as the way in which the interviewees attribute meaning.
Early in the analysis process, I realized that the survivor-interviewees related to
the Holocaust differently than the second- and third-generation offspring of survivors.
Survivors have had to personally confront and deal with the actual experience of the
Holocaust, whereas the descendants experienced the Holocaust primarily through their
parents and also through Holocaust-related literature and documentaries. The
descendants also faced unspoken tasks invisibly passed to them by their parents. As one
second-generation descendant said, they had to “undo” the damage done to their parents
by the Holocaust.
130 Ibid.(accessed). 131 Ibid.(accessed).
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For the descendants, a starting point was learning to relate to the Holocaust
through their parents’ experience of it. Another factor in their views of the Holocaust and
the Palestinians was individual personality. Personality proved to be a significant
determinant.
I will discuss my findings in terms of how, for survivors, their Holocaust
experiences informed their relation to the Palestinian situation. Later, I will consider the
significance of personality traits and the impacts they have on relations to both the
Holocaust and the Palestinians. When considering personality, I will consider how
socialization factors may have contributed to the development of the specific personality
traits discussed.
Relational Variables
The factors that best explain the interviewees’ relationships to the Holocaust, and
also explain how these relationships have influenced their involvement in peacebuilding,
are connected to three interrelating variables, introduced below. I discuss these in greater
detail in the chapters that follow.
1. Internalized meanings and lessons learned from the Holocaust: For
Holocaust survivors, I defined “internalized meanings and lessons” as their experiences
during the Holocaust and conclusions drawn from them. I considered the impact this has
had on their perceptions of the Palestinian situation. To understand this process and these
relationships for descendants of survivors, I considered the influence of parents and
grandparents on the way they related to both the Holocaust and the Palestinians, as well
as the “lessons” of the Holocaust emphasized in their homes. I found that these meanings
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and lessons had a great influence on the interviewees.
2. Personality factors: Personality also clearly influenced the way the
interviewees responded and related to the Holocaust and to Palestinians. The majority of
those I interviewed shared a few significant personality traits.
3. Catalysts: Usually specific experiences or series of experiences moved the
interviewees to become active in peacebuilding efforts with/for Palestinians. Accounts of
these experiences, and the individuals’ responses to them, further illuminate the internal
processes and personalities of these peace workers and help to reveal why they do what
they do.
Summary
In this chapter, I have suggested that relational constructs might best explain the reasons
why the interviewees have chosen to relate in the way they have to the Holocaust and the
Palestinian plight. The individuals’ relationships are based on their own personal
experiences, their personalities, and their experiences of significant role-models. The
remaining chapters will further elaborate and evaluate these findings.
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VICTIMIZATION, EMPOWERMENT, AND OUTCOMES: THE EXPERIENCES OF ORIGINAL HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS
In the first chapter, I discussed the lasting damage and emotional paralysis that
severe trauma can inflict on individuals and groups. I also established a link between the
victimhood suffered by Jews in the Holocaust and the victimhood imposed upon
Palestinians. However, most of original survivors I interviewed, empathetic toward
Palestinians, did not impose their victimhood on Palestinians and in fact took actions that
emphasized treating the Palestinians as full human beings. They actively sought to
empower the Palestinian people. This anomaly disrupts the above causal equation - if A
then B. Or does it? Does a variance in B indicate a difference in A? To find out, I
closely examined the Holocaust stories of those I interviewed, hoping to better
understand if the experiences they brought to the equation (A) could account for the
difference in outcome (B).
Upon carefully studying the transcripts, I observed that the later attitudes and
feelings of those actually in the Holocaust correlated with their personal experiences of
helplessness versus empowerment. My findings seem to further suggest a correlation
between the degree of helplessness or empowerment during the Holocaust and their later
attitudes and actions toward Palestinians. This particular situational variable seemed the
61
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most salient one to influence this relationship; although a greater number of individuals
would need to be interviewed to firmly establish this.
I interviewed seven Holocaust survivors involved in various types of
peacebuilding activities while in Israel. Because of time restrictions and snowball
sampling methods, it so happened that all of them were women. This resulted also
because of my limited network pool. The ages of these individuals ranged from 61 to 83.
They all had very different experiences in the Holocaust, as their narratives below
indicate.
In this section, I discuss the narratives of six of the seven individuals in-depth.
The seventh, not discussed below, was an infant bom near the close of the war: Veronika,
bom into hiding in Budapest, Hungary, in 1944. Although she could not remember being
in the Holocaust, she found that it still affected a major part of the social fabric
surrounding her while growing up: “When I was very young, people were still waiting for
other people to come back, [hoping] that someone who wasn’t there was still alive
somewhere. It was a part of daily life” during and after the Holocaust. 1 Her survival
technically makes her a Holocaust survivor; however she encountered the Holocaust
primarily through her parents, like the other descendants of survivors. Therefore I
discuss her experience in a later chapter.
Commandeering Fate: Hava’s Story/33
Bom in Poland in 1929, Hava was nine years old when the Germans announced
132 Veronika, interview by author, tape recording, Jerusalem, Israel, 1 February 2006. 133 Hava, interview by author, tape recording, Tel Aviv, Israel, 31 January 2006.
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over the radio that no Jews could use the railway, an offence punishable by death. Some
months before, Hava’s father had been forced into the army, and she and her mother had
heard nothing from him for months. She told me, “We went every two or three days to a
hospital to see all the people who were wounded or killed, to see if he was amongst
them.” Finally, they received a letter from him in Lithuania, saying that they should go
to him. Her mother had been preparing for the trip when the announcement forbidding
Jews to travel by train came over the radio.
Hava told me, “My mother was the bravest person I ever met, and she said,
‘Probably today, they won’t look. So we go today. If they look, then we are not lucky.’”
Hava’s uncle heard that they were planning to depart, and he begged her mother to leave
Hava with him.
Hava recalls her uncle saying, “If you want to commit suicide then do it yourself.
But why do you take her?” But Hava recognizes the insight her mother possessed: “She
was completely right. They didn’t check that day ... and we went to the Russian border.”
There, Hava’s mother found someone to help them cross the border and carry
their packages. But their guide betrayed them and led them straight back to the Germans.
The Germans confiscated everything they had and told them to sit against a wall. They
sat there with many other men, women, and children. The Germans informed them that
they would be shot.
Hava remembers that “in the beginning the [Germans] didn’t know what to do ...
They were still not used to kill[ing] ... people so easily ... I also think that if we had
started yelling, and shouting, and crying ... they would have lost patience and would
have started shooting,” Hava contemplated. “But everybody was standing quiet. If they
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are going to shoot us, they are going to shoot us. If not, not.”
The officer finally told the group of people to flee, because he could not follow
through with the orders to kill. “In one minute you are not here,” Hava remembers him
saying. Everyone began running in the guessed direction of the Russian border until they
ran into two German soldiers.
“One of them - again, it was the beginning - he was a human being, a nice man
... so he told us, ‘Do you have anything to eat, so that I can give my friend, so that he’ll
be busy and not want to look at what we are doing?’” They gave him what they had.
While the food distracted the one guard, the other showed them how and where to cross
the border into Russia and how to avoid the soldiers.
“Then we saw a group of ten people [like us], and he didn’t want them to see him
so he stood behind a tree, and told us to follow them because they knew where to go.
And so we succeeded to cross the border.”
This border became the first of many still to come. When they arrived in Russia,
they had nothing to eat and no place to sleep.
“My mother found a place to sleep [a factory] and invited everybody - all
of the other people were sitting in the streets sleeping. My parents knew some of
the people who worked there,” Hava said. “My father had a business relationship
with them. My mother took their addresses with her, and she contacted them
when we arrived. So we had 30 people staying with us. It was cold. Why should
anybody sleep outside?”
“Your mother sounds like she was an amazing woman,” I said to Hava.
“She was very small, very delicate, and very pretty,” Hava said. “She was
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completely fearless. She was the bravest person I have ever met in my life. For the rest
of her life, after this, she was never afraid of anything.”
Hava and her mother reunited with her father after crossing the Russian border
into Lithuania. This final crossing involved wading across an icy river in bitter
November weather. They waited for three days, hoping that the river would freeze. It
didn’t freeze over, and eventually they managed to find a place to cross.
“When we got out on the other side, we saw Lithuanian soldiers, but they didn’t
see us,” Hava recalled. “So we hid in the trees. For two hours we didn’t move ... After
ten minutes everything [that we were wearing] was frozen. But we were standing
without moving, without saying anything, and after two or three hours, they went away,”
Hava said. “When you’re angry enough or fearful enough, you do not fall ill.”
After the reunion with her father, an uncle sent for them to come to Israel, where
Hava has lived since she was ten years old. “I am generally not afraid of anything,
because anything that could have happened, happened. So, what more can happen?”
Hava: a Rebel with a Cause
Hava’s fearlessness has imbued her activism. She remains an avid protestor, and
about three years ago (at the age of 74!) she and others helped the Palestinians remove a
road block. Just before they completely demolished the road block, they were fired on by
Israeli soldiers. “I got a bit of a tear gas canister in my leg,” Hava said.
“I didn’t feel it, because I was running. It was the first time in my life that
I got the [tear] gas, and it was very unpleasant. So I was running like crazy, and I
didn’t even notice that my leg was full of blood,” Hava recalled. “Two
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Palestinian boys running near me yelled, “Stop, stop! You shouldn’t move.”
They started carrying me, because they thought that maybe I shouldn’t walk on
[my leg].”
The Palestinians helping her telephoned the Israeli army to tell them that an
Israeli had been wounded. The ambulance refused to come to the Palestinian side, so
Hava’s Palestinian friends carried her to the border crossing. Hava recalled how
unpleasantly the Israelis treated her upon her arrival.
“They didn’t speak to me, they didn’t tell me what hospital they were taking me
to, or anything, because I was with the Palestinians.” This cool reception probably
related to the date: as Hava recalled, “It was Holocaust Memorial day, and the doctor
asked me why I would be working with the Palestinians on such a day. I told him that I
was working especially on the day of the Holocaust; in the memory of the Holocaust we
shouldn’t behave like this towards the Palestinians. I started shouting at him so he was
very quiet.” Hava also told me about some of her other activism work, including being a
participant in a band called “Raging Grannies.”
Hava: The Lasting Impact of the Holocaust
Hava told about her perspectives on how the Holocaust has influenced her and
how she has seen it influence Israeli society at large: “Is the question it should never
happen again? Or is it, it should never happen again to us? This is the question. Quite a
lot of the people in Israel think that it should never happen again to us. So we can do it -
not it, it’s nothing compared to [the Holocaust], but [what’s happening here is] bad
enough. I think it should never happen again. So nobody should ever be in this position.
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Nobody should fear, and nobody should suffer. It shouldn’t be done to anybody.”
The Holocaust left an indelible mark on Hava. “It’s this feeling, why me? ... Why
should I remain alive? It’s something not alright. It shouldn’t have happened like this.
Why should just me? I was neither the nicest nor the cleverest nor the anything. Why
me? And it has been with me all of my life, the feeling of being guilty. And if I got my
life as more or less a special favor - not from God, because I don’t believe in God -
so I should pay for it.”
Going through the Holocaust gave Hava a heightened sense of responsibility.
“You are responsible for everybody you meet. Otherwise, nobody will be able to get out
of it. So you have to help, you have to do things ... I am an Israeli. So the question of
what Israel is doing, it’s my responsibility,” she said. “I fought in the war which started
all of this. So of course I am responsible. So everything that Israel is doing, I’m
responsible. I can’t change it, but at least I can say that I don’t agree.”
One of the major problems she sees in Israel is the matter of equality.
“I think the Palestinian-Israelis they should get equality. As a child, I was
in Poland, and we were not equal citizens, and I don’t think its right. I disliked it
then and I dislike it now. If you give them citizenship it should be a full
citizenship,” emphasized Have. “There is one minister for education. The money
for a Jewish child is twice as much as the money for an Arab child. It shouldn’t
be like this. It can’t be called a democratic state. It’s democratic like South
Africa was democratic,” Hava pointed out. “It was very democratic for the
whites.”
Hava also does what she can to maintain a personal connection with Palestinians,
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by writing letters to those in prison and by buying ice cream for the Palestinian children
who come to visit a family member in jail. “I think when they grow up they will know
that there was this old crazy woman who gave them ice cream. So the hatred will not be
so complete,” she told me.
Hava’s experience of escape empowered her. She and her mother survived by
their wits, daring, and good fortune. The soldiers they encountered in their journey
recognized her humanity, as opposed to denying it. Additionally, her mother modeled for
Hava a strong ethic of caring. These aspects help explain how she can stand up to Israeli
governmental authority and actively seek and demand that the value and rights of others
be recognized.
Bronya’s Story: A Fighter in the Warsaw Ghetto134
“You know,” Bronya said to me during the interview, “people who suffered more
than others are not better. I was fortunate not to experience the bad in its pure form, if I
may say so.” This surprised me, coming from a woman who had lost her entire
immediate and extended family in the Holocaust. “My sufferings was not like the people
who were humiliated and abused in a camp, and saw their friends and their families
be[ing] burnt in the crematoriums. It is different when you witnessed something,
[compared to only] reading about,” she stated.
She continued, “Because as I saw and I think, people don’t become better when
they suffer more. So I’m glad for what I experienced not.” Bronya fought in the Warsaw
Ghetto, and I was told, fell in love with one of the main resistance leaders there. She
134 Bronya, interview by author.
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spoke little about her experience in the ghetto during our interview and seemed to shy
away from discussing details.
Bronya credited her parents for her survival ability. “I was the first bom to my
parents. I think I learned a lot from my mother, and this is very important, because my
parents they had a lot of confidence in me. Children feel it, if their parents have
confidence or not [in them], I was always astonished that my mother had so much
confidence in what I’m doing.”
As for the Palestinians, Bronya told me that she understands why they fight.
“You know, from the beginning [of my time here in Israel], I was aware that we have not
the right to behave like we behave very often [toward the Palestinians], I understand the
Palestinians. I think they have to fight,” she said unabashedly. “They have to fight to
remain human, as human beings. As human beings they have to fight. I don’t accept
what we are doing in the territories.” Bronya said this despite never having known any
Palestinians personally. As a member of Women in Black, she protested the occupation
of the occupied territories every Friday. Due to a recent deterioration of her health, she
can no longer attend these protests.
And what of Israel? “It was a dream,” she said almost wistfully. “And I was
thinking like many, many others that the Germans could murder us because we’ve
nowhere to go. I was as a naive young person. I was thinking that people can harm the
Jews because they have no state, they have no government, they have no army,” she said.
“I thought it would solve the problem existing for centuries. But I was wrong, because
very often I’m not proud of my government and of my country. And this is hard,
especially for me and for other dreamers,” she said, pausing for a moment. “But dreams
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are not reality. Dreams remain dreams.”
Stella’s Story of Hiding and Escape135
“For every step towards peace - 1 am there.” We were sitting in Stella’s little
home, nestled on one of Haifa’s steep slopes, overlooking the brilliant sea below. “I
know that these people [Palestinians] are treated like second class, and I wanted to repair
the feeling here, [to let them know] that not everyone is fascist. I know that it will not
help to change the government and the politics. But [when] the [Arab] children came
from schools, they [will] see [an] old woman protesting. [Even] when it is cold and
raining, [they will see that] she is still protesting.” Stella referred here to her activities as
a protester with Women in Black, who gather at the base of the Baha’i Temple.
“Generally it is women protesting, and a few men from the communist party. I try to
help people believe in humanity again, in the goodness in people. The Polish Pope said
that if you believe in the goodness that is in men, it is going out from here.”
Stella converted to Christianity after surviving the Holocaust. Growing up,
especially in the Polish ghetto she called home during the Second World War, Stella
described herself as anti-Semitic because of the “very bad people there.” At this time,
her family was not particularly religious. Her mother, as a spiritual seeker, had not found
a religion with which she could identify. Her father identified as a Communist. Stella
frequently received harsh treatment from the members of the Hasidic community for her
family’s lack of religion. In the ghetto, she saw fellow Jews collaborate with the Nazis
and even take part in the massacres.
135 Stella, interview by author, tape recording, Haifa, Israel, 28 January 2006.
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“My lesson from the Holocaust is that everyone needs to eat. In the Ghetto
Warsaw they said that if anyone saves one man, he saves the whole world.” Stella has
taken this belief and applied to the way she approaches others. “Every day 40,000
children are going to their death. I think if everyone took one child, it would not be so
bad.” Stella went on to tell me about the Indian girl that she supports with money.
“When I saw her for the first time, she was with them [a special Polish organization] for a
few months. She looked like a child from the concentration camp. Now she is better.
She’s not normal, and cannot be, but everyone helps, and she is happy.”
Stella spoke to me of an experience that haunts her to this very day and that
influenced the development of this philosophy. “In the Warsaw Ghetto ... I saw one man
... near the steps of a coffeehouse. Inside it was very nice. [For] three days and for three
nights I listened and heard the man crying ... [Still] today I am feeling very bad that I did
not help much. Like the people in the coffeehouse, we have everything on the table, and
what are we doing with this? I try to do what I can do to change this. To be a human I
cannot eat alone.”
“I have the right to be poor,” Stella told me at a later point in the interview.
“Because I know that anything that I have I need to give to anyone who doesn’t have.
This is normal for me. I was not hungry a lot, but I saw people who were, and I know
how that is ... the little piece of bread - it is necessary to have this.”
When Stella first arrived in Israel 56 years ago, she lived in a cloister and worked
as a social worker. She told me about the first time she developed close Arab friends. “I
was in Neve Shalom, and I listened [to how the Arab] people [were] expelled from this
country ... [There] we had this partnership and bridge and friends with the Arab women.
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I love them. They are most close to me.” Stella reported that her neighbors have even
asked her, “Is it true that you love more the Arabs than the Jewish people?”
“I didn’t know how to answer!” Stella confided. “I could not tell them [that] this
[was true]. So I said I love the Sephardic people. [But really] I don’t love the Ashkenazi
people.”
Stella explained further why she felt this way:
“Jewish people need to feel hated, because otherwise they do not feel
Jewish ... But I know that the best way to destroy my enemy is to love him. I feel
that I share the same mentality with the Palestinians,” Stella said. “Their doors
are always open; they are not for the money. If you come to them at any time,
you will receive the best hospitality in the world.”
She declared, “I cannot hate [the terrorists] because I understand them. I say it
many times, that if I [had] grown up in their condition I [would also] hate,” she said
simply. “I had a very good home and a very good school, but when the German people
came I dreamt of being like the Polish woman who invited the German soldiers to her
gate, and then killed them. I dreamed of doing this. I cannot hate them; I understand
them.”
Growing up in Silence: Yona’s Experience in a Nunnery136
When the war started, Yona was three years old. She grew to the age of ten by
the time it finished. For the duration of the war, she survived as a Christian in a
monastery. Her mother lived separately from her on false papers and worked at a nearby
136 Yona, interview by author.
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hospital as a nurse, even though in reality she was a doctor. She risked greater chances of
discovery if she tried to continue working as a doctor. Because of their forced
circumstances, Yona essentially grew up without a mother. “When I was in the
monastery I knew that I had to hide my identity and so on, and I have to be good with the
Sisters. I was not free in my behavior, so I am more restricted and am not used to
expressing] emotions. I was in a place where you had to obey. If you are okay then you
get things. And if not you got hit on your head.”
I asked Yona to explain her involvement as an activist. “I have always thought
about the Palestinians,” she told me. “[And I get satisfaction that] I’m not silent and I’m
doing something against the deeds that oppose ... One of the problems in the Holocaust
was that the people were silent,” Yona noted. “Nobody opposed the Nazi party, and they
said that they did not know what is going on in the camps and the ghettos.”
Yona has found a way to assert herself and make herself heard after growing up in
such a stifled environment. She spoke about how, in the past, she often had a hard time if
people dealt aggressively with her. “When somebody is speaking to me aggressively,
I’m too weak, I cannot speak firmly. I don’t know what to answer. I accept this attitude
[of] what is against me. And only afterwards I think why didn’t I answer? Why didn’t I
say so, and so, and so? I think that I am a bit better in this way now.”
She described the ultimate message that she took from the Holocaust: It is the
ability “to see the other as a human being, and not as an animal, or less than an animal.
Sometimes the soldiers - even our soldiers - are behaving to the enemy not as a human
being, but less,” Yona said, “This, in my opinion, is the Nazi treatment: to see the others
that you don’t like as not human. This is what is important.”
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Beate: Between Heroes and Victims137
Bom in the Netherlands in 1943, Beate remembers little of being in hiding.
However, the years immediately following the war permanently impacted her. “I had a
feeling of guilt that I survived with my parents,” she said. “Others like me had to do
without their parents. This has greatly influenced me. What was a real shock for me was
once when a Jewish organization was trying to find housing for orphaned Jewish
children, and [my parents] said no, saying that they had suffered enough, and they had
also taken on some of my cousins. That has given me very bad feelings of guilt, that they
didn’t open their home for other children who had no parents. I met two such war
victims, when I was already more or less grown up. Twice they were men with whom I
had a love relationship. And I think, in this love relationship, I could not say no. You
understand that? I wanted to be their mother. I wanted to give them a home.”
Beate always felt the deep need to make sure that she included everyone around
her. “This has always been very strong in me - never to exclude anybody. It can be so
easy to exclude somebody who also wants to belong. It doesn’t matter if it is somebody
who is not so popular or somebody who is different.”
Beate grew up hearing the stories of her parents’ experience during this time.
Overall, her family fared comparatively well and did not have such a humiliating
experience. Her father, quite an outspoken individual in the defense of Jews, landed in
the local prison a couple of times.
Beate tells, “The first time there was an old friend of the Bridge Club, a
137 Beate, interview by author, tape recording, Tel Aviv, Israel, 31 January 2006.
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collaborator, and my father had told him, ‘Wait until this occupation is over and we will
get your kind! ’ The man reported him to the police, and my father was summoned, but
then after one night they sent him home. My father was of course a German speaker; it
helped perhaps.
Beate continues, “The second time that he got himself into trouble - my mother
was [always asking,] ‘Why does he do it? Why doesn’t he think?!’ - he was at the
railway station in 1941, and there was a German officer next to him, and he was talking
about Jews, and what he said about them were lies. And my father who had never the
habit of attacking people physically, then did it. He attacked him physically, and pushed
him down on the ground. He was a good sportsman ... And then he was summoned
again. He got into prison.”
Beate describes an odd little development during her father’s trial. “In the trial
the German governor also wanted to know what his job had been in Germany. My father
had been working for a big company and it had branches all over the country, and they
had a very famous slogan advertisement text, and my father mentioned not only the name
of the company but also pronounced the slogan.”
This advertising slogan seemed to touch the German governor. Beate’s father felt
as if “the man was really feeling something - it could have also been that he himself had
worked for that company. My father always felt that when he said that, he had him.”
Beate continues, “And [my father] was not deported, he was kept in the police
station, and he was there for several months. They let him do some work, and he was
walking free in the courtyard, and my mother could shout to him over the wall. It was
quite a human way of dealing with it.”
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Then tragedy struck Beate’s parents, who had one child at this point. One day
when the child was being watched by neighbors while her mother was at work, the child
dashed into the street and was hit by a car and died. At that time, the social environment
did not yet forbid affability toward Jews; they still lived in their homes, having not yet
been forced into hiding. The prison not only allowed Beate’s father to attend the funeral,
but released him as well. “The German said that he did it because he had pity for [my
father’s] wife. I was born 10 months later.”
Beate also told me about another influential story that her parents told her. When
their family did go into hiding, Beate’s mother moved around frequently, as did Beate.
Their entire family unit split up when they went into hiding. Speaking of her mother,
Beate told me that she was easily likable, and the people who hid her liked her. “Once
somebody told her, ‘you are a Jewish woman with a Christian heart.’ Then later she was
in a place with other Jews in hiding, and they were talking about this woman who was
hiding them, that she was such a good woman, that she was really, ‘a Christian woman
with a Jewish heart.’ So I got from my parents some messages which you could interpret
into a— that humanity is not only us, it’s not only us against them and them against us.”
Generally, Beate reported a fairly positive outlook on life and on human nature.
“Like Anna Frank who I also read, although I was already Dutch and Jewish, I continue
to believe in the good seed of the human nature. What I learned young is that when
people are in a big collective, they can become monsters.” She discussed that she forced
herself to overcome that fear when she became involved in anti-nuclear protest activities.
“I had always avoided the demonstrations because I didn’t want to be one in the crowd
when somebody was shouting, and then everyone imitates it. And then in the eighties I
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still went, because I had growing up children and I felt that when I had the courage to
give birth in a world which is in the danger of atomic weapons, then I have to at least
help fight against them. It was again my mother[ly] instinct which pushed me.”
Beate, a deeply-involved, bold, and courageous activist, co-founded the
organization Gush Shalom, and has done so much on the Palestinian front that one could
write an entire book about her actions. Beate described her activism as something that
brought her home to herself.
She says, “It has made me a more whole person. I think that I was always very
much influenced by the fact that I grew up between victims and heroes. The heroes were
the non-Jews, people who had saved our lives. The victims were my family and some
friends. And then there were also the other people who all of this had not affected so
much. From the moment I came to realize that I had to raise my voice as a dissident Jew,
I feel that this is for which I was - this strange cocktail which I am, was made for this
occasion. So I have found my destiny.”
Paradise Lost: Ester’s Exile138
During the Holocaust, Ester experienced loss, rejection, and helplessness, as a
victim of circumstance and of the Nazis. At the onset of World War II, Ester’s parents
sent her, age 15, to England. That was the last time she saw her parents, who eventually
died in concentration camps. She never recovered from the loss, especially the loss of
her mother. Throughout the interview, I sensed that I sat with a grieving young woman
of 15 years, who also happened to be in her eighties.
138 Ester, interview by author, tape recording, Jerusalem, 19 January 2006.
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Ester quickly set the tone, saying, “The Holocaust and I are one. You can’t
separate me from the Holocaust.” Ester’s identity is indeed centered on the Holocaust.
“I’m a Zionist, I’m Jewish, I’m Israeli, and I’m the Shoah. Those are the four
components of my identity,” she told me. Her Holocaust identity is an example of what
Howard Stein calls “hypercathected identity,” a “totalistic identity reorganization ...
[that] strait-jacket[s] development.”139 This simply means that Ester has built her entire
personal identity around survivorship and the historical commemoration of the
Holocaust. Stein describes this as “an effort at mastery by turning passive into active ...
[It becomes] a central organizing principle of their lives, and a bond of obligation and
loyalty to their children never to forget.”140
As the interview progressed, it appeared that these four things did not define her
entirely: a Jewish Zionist, an Israeli citizen, and someone who had experienced the
devastating loss of the Holocaust. These four attributes also represented ways to
reconnect with her past, and especially with her mother. “We were very, very Jewish
Zionist,” Ester said, speaking of her family. “And more Zionist than Jewish, since the
Belfort declaration. It gave my mother a feeling that an ancient dream can now be
fulfilled ... ‘Next year in Jerusalem! ’ We were Jewish Zionist with the intention of going
to Palestine.” Ester told me that times had changed, and because of the depression, they
lost their family shop and could no longer immigrate. If only their family had not lost the
shop, they all would have, possibly, lived much longer lives. Thus, the Holocaust served
to affirm her Zionist roots.
139 Stein, "The Holocaust, the Self, and the Question o f Wholeness: A Response to Lewin," 500. 140 Ibid.
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Ester’s parents had a difficult time finding a place to send her, as the war broke
out. Over and over again, organizations that offered a way out of the country rejected
Ester. “I was turned down from being adopted in America because I didn’t have blonde
curly hair. I was too ugly and I didn’t go to high school. I was turned down to go to
Palestine because I was underweight. So eventually there came an opportunity with
Kindertransport to England. So I went to Scotland.”
Ester stayed in touch with her mother for several years, who tried to be there with
Ester as best she could through her letters. Eventually the letters stopped, and Ester lived
in the dark for many years, not knowing what had happened to her parents. She only
knew that they had been sent to Auschwitz - but she had no idea what that meant. Only
with the Eichmann trial in 1961 did she learn what Auschwitz meant. “I didn’t really
want to hear all of the testimonies and evidence, but it was everywhere. When my
children were in school there was no talk of the Holocaust, because no one knew what
had happened.”
Ester described her emotional development as having come to a standstill by that
time. “I was too skinny; I didn’t have much of an education - only seven years of school
- emotionally I was pretty well stuck.”
Later on, she went to school and studied things like sociology and educational
counseling, which helped her better understand herself and how her painful experience
had affected her. “It was only after that,” she said, “that I could really cope with trying to
get into the subject of the Holocaust, what had happened to my mother, what had
happened in Auschwitz, and all of that.”
Eventually, she became involved in interfaith dialogues, in order to pass along the
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story of the Holocaust to the next generation, “preserving [the] inheritance from my
parents; their ethics. My work with interfaith is ... a continuation of where I had come
from and what I had seen at home.” Ester began telling her story in 1988, at a time when
the Holocaust silence was just starting to break.
Ester also told me that she faced challenges in sharing her experiences. “Here
there’s competition as to who is considered a survivor. And actually people who were
camp survivors or ghetto fighters thought they were the only ones allowed to talk about
it.” Ester’s story did not fit any of those scenarios. “Having not been in a camp, having
lost my parents in a camp - 1 wasn’t even [technically] a second-generation, because my
parents had not even survived.” Ester had once again slipped between the cracks.
“Eventually I joined a group whose interest was to pass on the knowledge of the
Holocaust and its consequences. And there are consequences,” she reminded me. “It’s
quite a difference when we were unprotected in Germany - legally unprotected - or being
here, able to defend ourselves.”
The place Ester inhabits emotionally and cognitively has set the premise for the
kind of work she does regarding Palestinians. Ester’s activities with Palestinians focused
on her interfaith efforts. She chose not to see this as peacebuilding work and clearly had
little patience for presumptuous peace workers.
“I think that it is very important that we encounter the other, that we should not be
afraid to encounter the other one of a different religion,” she said. “Peacemakers - all
they did was tried to find the blame in the situation. It doesn’t matter who is to blame for
the situation. The situation is the situation is to blame. Trying to make me - by me I
mean Israelis - [as the one out] to blame, that’s not making peace with anybody. That is
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why I’m afraid of belonging to peacemaking forces who all blame the Israelis.”
She stated, “Peace workers are those who try to tell me, ‘But you Israelis are
stronger than the Palestinians, you should stop killing them, and they will stop killing
you.’ Why should I be killed before I kill them?”
However, Ester opened up to those different from herself under emotionally non
threatening situations. “I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t surrounded by non-Jews.
In Haifa University I studied with Arabs, and they came to my house to study with me,
and I visited them through the scouts, through being a student... Anyone who is decent
is welcome to my house. If he’s not decent, and he’s a Jew, he’s not welcome. So it’s a
matter of decency, of respect to one another.”
A matter of respect for Ester means not challenging her legitimacy to live in Israel
as a Jew, which she equates with anti-Semitism.
“The world doesn’t want us to be here, and the world doesn’t want us to
be anywhere else ... You can’t separate the anti-Semitism and the anti-Israelism
from politics. I’m just the same Ester!” she pointed out, “Besides which, I don’t
think our politics are so terrible. [If] the Palestinians would want to talk to us,
we’re willing to talk to them - but not kill us!”
Because Ester’s identity became intertwined with Israel and the Holocaust, seeing
Israel as “terrible” would invariably infer that she was terrible. Yet, how could she be
terrible? She had only suffered repeatedly at the hand of fate.
Ester is the Holocaust, and for her the Holocaust continues. A tragic incident
reaffirmed this for her when her grandson died in a gun battle in Jenin.
“On Holocaust Remembrance day I was in Yad Vashem about to give a
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workshop, and I was called to the phone. And I said, ‘No, no, I’m busy, I can’t
come to the phone.’ And then my son came and he picked me up - and he
stopped far away, and then he came towards me and said [that] amongst the 13
soldiers that fell in Jenin, is my grandson. Instead of giving the workshop on
how to preserve memory of my parents, I went to the funeral. So the Shoah for
me wasn’t there, and it wasn’t then. It’s here and now.”
Empowerment versus Helplessness
In this chapter, I have related and discussed the significant traumatic and
affirmative experiences of the Holocaust survivors I interviewed. For these survivors, not
having directly experienced the horrors of the concentration camps seemed a significant
factor in influencing and explaining how they related to Palestinian issues. As Bronya
said, “I am thankful for the suffering I have experienced not.” During the course of these
interviews, five of the seven survivors I interviewed initiated the comparison of abused
children later abusing their own children in their assessment of the impact the Holocaust
had on the Jewish-Israelis’ treatment of Palestinians.
Ester’s experience lends further weight to this understanding. It seems that
evading the death camps alone was not enough to explain the views and experiences of
those who survived the Holocaust, as much as the ability or inability to play an active
role in determining their own fate.141 Personal empowerment seemed to ultimately create
more emotional and cognitive space to see a more complete vision of the suffering of
141 It is possible to consider empowerment also as a kind of psychological freedom claimed by determining one’s own responses to the situations that an individual may find him or herself in. Consider Viktor Frankl’s book,Man's Search for Meaning, where he recounts his experiences during the Holocaust.
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Palestinians, and Israel’s role in it. Whereas having experienced absolute helplessness
during the Holocaust seemed to facilitate the opposite result, making the individual more
defensive. Karkar writes with regard to Muslim - Hindu conflicts in India (but with
relevance to the topic at hand) that:
The feeling of helplessness which persecution anxiety engenders reverses the process of idealization, reveals the fragility of the group’s grandiose self... The crumbling self, with its unbearable state of helplessness, demands restoration through forceful action [and group cohesion].142
I return to my observations at the beginning of the chapter, noting that the
perceived and actual level of empowerment versus helplessness which a survivor
experienced greatly impacted her sense of self and in turn her relation to the Holocaust
and to Palestinians. This finding applied singularly to the original Holocaust survivors I
interviewed. Several of the second- and third-generation descendants of Holocaust
survivors I interviewed had had parents in concentration camps. Their observations
further reinforced my finding of a long-term debilitating effect of experiencing
victimization and helplessness first-hand.
142 Kakar, The Colours o f Violence,212.
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CARRYING THE TORCH: THE DESCENDANTS OF SURVIVORS
The descendants of Holocaust survivors never had to face the Holocaust directly.
However, they encountered it through their parents and grandparents. Because of this,
they had a two-fold task. They not only had to confront and grapple with the horrors of
the Holocaust and know that those closest to them had been subject to such horrors, but
they frequently had to shoulder the emotional burdens of their parents and grandparents.
Children of Survivors
I interviewed eight children of Holocaust survivors (second generation survivors)
in Israel who participated actively in peacebuilding efforts. Of the eight, two were
women. At least three had parents who had been in the death camps. This fact did not
impede their activism in any way. Overall, this group seemed to have come to terms with
Germany to a degree that many of the original survivors had not. Some of these
individuals had more issues with Austria and Poland than with Germany; they felt that
these countries had not acknowledged and confronted their Nazi past in the same way
that Germany had. But not everyone felt this way. The following quote reflected the
sentiments of many of those I interviewed:
84
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I’m sick and tired that the second and third and fourth and fifth generations of poor German kids who have nothing to do with it have to pay, have to pay with their guilt, and still come at seventeen years old in 2006 to work in Israel to repair for the damage of some great grandfather. I think it’s sickening. And I think it’s sickening that Jews and Israelis still treat them like shit just because they’re German!143
Of eleven interviewees who were children and grandchildren of survivors, six
directly stated that they did not identify as Zionists. Several suggested that they could
only justify their continued residence in Israel by standing for human rights and justice
and by supporting the right treatment of Palestinians. However, Zionist and non-Zionist
persons alike deeply loved and appreciated the land, the people, the culture, the food, and
their mother tongue.
From my interviews with survivors’ children and grandchildren, I discovered two
types of home environments which these individuals had grown up in, one type where
talk of the Holocaust was avoided, and another type where the family talked openly about
the Holocaust. The silence usually indicated severe trauma; many of the Holocaust
survivors from such homes had family members who had been in concentration camps.
For both children and grandchildren from such homes, the silence alone proved difficult.
Nearly all those I interviewed, especially the children of survivors, referred to
their deeply-felt obligation to compensate for, protect from, and undo the harm their
parents had experienced. As Dan, the son of the survivor, Ester, stated,
Our parents gave us the torch, and we have to carry the torch ... the ties are family ties ... [Because of this] we are not tied, we are nailed to this country ... I see myself as [a] piece within the chain of Israel. I don’t feel that I have the right to take part in breaking that chain. It’s an obligation, it’s not about rights or n o t... I have a strong sense of obligation, which is not normal for most people in the world, an obligation to the state, to the
143 Talma, interview by author, Haifa, Israel, 4 February 2006.
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history, to the people ... In a way, it’s the only way to survive here. Because if you see your kids - some of the friends of my kids are dead. The first normal reaction would be, let’s find another place [to live].144
Dan had this sense of obligation from a very young age. “As a kid, actually, I realized
that I had to defend my parents. I grew up knowing that I have to protect them, that I’m
just waiting for the time when I’ll be called up for duty. Because in a way, they failed.
My mother didn’t defend her parents.”145 He shared with me one of his earliest
memories: knowing that the Germans had taken away his grandfather and grandmother.
He knew these things even as a small child: “At the age of four or five, I organized my
friends and we built a shelter, in case someone would come and [try to] take us. We
thought [it would be the] Germans. Only later I realized that there were no Germans
around.”146
Adam, a second-generation survivor and the son of Hava, said that he has always
felt the need to justify his existence:
My mother was always an activist. Not only in the political sense, but also in giving food to strangers in the street, helping people: neighbors, invalids, everyone. Anybody that needs help - people, animals, anybody who is in need. And I think this is something I got from her. The feeling that you have to save lives in order to justify your existence, to do something to prove that you deserve to be alive.147
Another survivor’s child whom I interviewed referred to being “ball-and-chained to
Israel.”148
A survivor’s daughter, Talma, described the challenge as having an “injustice to
undo.” She said, “I was bom a Jew, but I don’t define myself, except by birth definition,
144 Dan, interview by author, tape recording, Jerusalem, 26 January 2006. 145 Ibid. 146 Ibid. 147 Adam, interview by author, tape recording, Tel Aviv, Israel, 31 January 2006. 148 Daniel S, interview by author, tape recording, Jerusalem, Israel, 26 January 2006.
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as a Jew. I’m an Internationalist, a woman of the world with no religion. A Utopian.”149
So started our conversation. Talma reacted to the Holocaust with overt rejection. She
related to me that she had even gotten into a terrible argument with her survivor mother
about Zionism and the Jewish presence in historical Palestine. (Talma’s father founded
the Zionist movement in Germany.) She said:
Once you hear the word “holocaust” you have to shut up because there is nothing that you can say. [That’s how] it was ... in my house. When I said something in an argument... sooner or later came the word, “But the Holocaust” and then if I didn’t want to break my mother I [would] have to shut up, and it’s as if all of my arguments were wrong. And once as a grownup I did say, “Oh, fuck you with your Holocaust—”
Here Talma inhaled sharply —“It was like the worst thing ... She didn’t sleep, and they
shouted at me to get out, and I had to sit and apologize, and it was the worst [thing] you
could say.”150 Talma, the only person I interviewed who wanted nothing to do with the
Holocaust, explained:
[Maybe] it was survival. Maybe the Holocaust was so heavy in the house that in order to survive, I just didn’t bother myself and snapped out of i t ... So maybe it was survival for a kid. It was when I grew politicized [that] it became part of the injustice that I would undo. Like when I was a youngster, they started to be obnoxious to the Christians in Israel. I wore the [Christian] cross [around my neck].151
Talma knew little about her mother’s past, her family, her experience in the Holocaust, or
even the identity of her mother’s other daughter, her older half-sister. She suspected that
her mother would take this information with her to the grave.
From my interactions with her, I thought Talma reacted to the Holocaust much
more than rejected it. I saw her as someone unafraid to broach any topic, outspoken, with
149 Talma, interview by author. 150 Ibid. 151 Ibid.
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a razor-sharp wit and mind. I wondered if her outspokenness, on some level, was a
reaction to the deafening silence of her mother. Although Talma never became obsessed
with the Holocaust and left it alone as much as possible, the underlying philosophical
questions that troubled Talma as a young adult also seemed central to the Holocaust:
I didn’t know why, but I felt very down and depressed ... I was called the Heavy One. I was very influenced by existentialist issues; Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus, and all th at... I was very pretty, and I couldn’t stand [not] knowing ... who would be there [for me] if I didn’t have this fucking face ... There was a certain period where I cut my face with a razor to see who would stay when I didn’t have this [beautiful] face.152
This seemed to me the central agonies those in the Holocaust confronted: Can people be
trusted? Who will come through for us when we lose our social currency, or when it
becomes inconvenient, unpopular, and even dangerous to do so? Who will be there for
us when they have nothing to gain by doing so?
Probably one of the most striking stories of survival, and the altruistic
intervention that spans generations, came from Ronit, a survivor’s daughter whose family
originated from Sarajevo. When I asked her how the Holocaust had impacted her
perception of human nature and of people, she replied, “I don’t have any recollection of
being afraid of people. Not of the Palestinians - not of anybody.” 1 She said that while
she was growing up, her family emphasized this; it came from a very interesting family
story.
When the war finally reached Sarajevo and the Nazis arrived, the soldiers tried to
round up all of the Jews. Ronit’s father, just 12 or 13 at the time, went into hiding. Her
grandfather, however, needed money for his family to survive. He came out of hiding
152 Talma, interview by author. 153 Ronit, interview by author, tape recording, Jerusalem, Israel, 2 February 2006.
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and went to the factory he owned to try and find some money. The soldiers captured him
and put him in a jail cell, essentially a holding space for people before being hung. They
did not give him food or anything else.
Ronit told me that a young Muslim woman, whose father knew her grandfather as
a business contact, brought him food in prison despite the danger and risk of doing so.
Somehow, Ronit’s grandfather found a way to escape and fled by jumping from roof to
roof. He escaped to this young woman’s home. They immediately took him in and urged
him not to leave, because if the Nazis captured him again, something terrible would
certainly happen. But her grandfather stayed only a few days, because he knew that the
people hiding him would be hung if found out. He left them with a box of jewelry and
pictures for safekeeping. Sometime later, he again needed money to feed his family; he
went to the factory, and again he was caught. Once again this same family helped him.
After he arrived in Israel, he wished to thank this family. He went to Yad
Vashem, but the people there told him that they could not have her recognized, because
only Christians had helped Jews during the Holocaust. Yet he remained adamant: “He
said, ‘No! She was Muslim and she helped us. And not only me. There were two more
families.’ The Nazis even took her father to a concentration camp and killed him.”
It became an on-going tug-of-war between Ronit’s grandfather and Yad Vashem.
Her grandfather persisted, and after several years he succeeded.
Ronit said, “And I thought the [whole] time, ‘Who needs this kind of honor? We
know about it, she’s welcome in our house, we invited her to visit.’”
But her grandfather held firm. “No, ‘Israel should recognize it,”’ Ronit
remembered him saying. “And he succeeded. She was recognized, she came, she
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planted a tree in Yad Vashem. She was the first Muslim to be recognized and to receive
this honor.”
And then in 1992, Sarajevo was bombarded. Israel assisted the Jewish federation
there. Ronit recalled how her family asked the Jewish federation to help this woman,
located in a different part of the city. “It was very difficult to reach her, but because of
this honor, they did help her, and they brought her back to Israel,” said Ronit. “She was
saved - she and her granddaughter and her daughter, who came with her husband.”
Ronit points out that “When you ask this woman, ‘Why did you do this?’ She
said, ‘Well of course, they were friends. We didn’t think twice.’
“So if they’re Muslim, or Christian, or Jews - what’s the difference?” Ronit
concluded.154
Humor and the Holocaust
“I always knew, without anybody telling me, I knew,” Zameret said, referring to
her four grandparents, all of whom had survived the Holocaust. “It’s something that we
laugh about in Israel. You have small signs that these people were in the Holocaust, you
know, like some people always have luggage next to their door, in case that someone will
come, they will be ready.”155
As Meir, a second-generation survivor described it, “I didn’t learn [about the
Holocaust]. I drank it with the milk of my mother ... In my house we breathed it.”156
Nearly everyone I interviewed identified with not wasting food and not
154 Ronit, interview by author. 155 Zameret, interview by author, tape recording, Haifa, Israel, 4 February 2006. 156 Meir, interview by author, tape recording, Jerusalem, Israel, 18 January 2006.
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remembering a time without the knowledge that a parent or grandparent had been in the
Holocaust.
“My grandparents had a cupboard full of just soaps, and oil, and sugar, flour. It’s
funny ‘cause I’m also like that a little bit today,” Zameret mused. “My friends always
talk about how I never go and buy just one sugar. I will buy four sugars or five soaps.
We knew that these kinds of things only happened in very specific houses.”157
Zameret came from a family that did not openly discuss the Holocaust. “All I
knew was that there was this one day a year when grandpa is very sad, and you shouldn’t
ask him anything, and he is sometimes crying at night and screaming.”158 Zameret’s
response to the Holocaust seemed the opposite of Talma’s. Whereas Talma consciously
rejected and ignored the Holocaust, Zameret became obsessed with it. She told me that
she ascribes this to the silence she experienced growing up. When I met with her,
Zameret was working toward her master’s degree in history, focusing on Nazi Germany.
Zameret exhibited something that I had not found often in my interviews: humor.
She referred to this as a symbol of survivors’ grandchildren: “I think the third generation
allows themselves to say things that the second generation and of course the first
generation never allowed themselves,” she told me. “I also think that it is a Jewish
quality to be able to laugh about yourself. We really have a long history of going through
bad times with humor. A lot of people forget, but there was really a lot of humor inside
the ghetto and even in the concentration camps,” Zameret pointed out. “You can hear
even jokes from people from Auschwitz. You know, people were still living. And as
157 Zameret, interview by author. 158 Ibid.
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long as people were still living you had everything. People forget about the humor in the
Holocaust, that there was sexuality in the Holocaust - and as long as people were still
living you had everything.” She continued, “The younger ones of us - I’m generalizing a
bit - are more able to use humor to cope with this issue. I think it’s another way of
coping with [the trauma].”159
I asked Zameret how she felt impacted by the Holocaust. “I think in every way,”
she responded. “As a kid I was reading a lot of Holocaust books, more than the average
teenager. Aside from the sadness, I got two basic emotional ethics from these books.
One: how could one people do it to another? To their neighbor?” she queried. “What
makes a relatively normal ordinary man or woman get up one day and decide that he or
she will become a Nazi Nationalist? The other thing was that we should always be very
careful of the weak among us. Not the weak, but the ones who need protection,” she
continued. “And we should always be an inspiration for equality and a good life for
everyone. You know, respect the other. This was really the two biggest notions.”160
Zameret’s conclusions coincided with those of everyone else I interviewed; the
Holocaust undoubtedly impacted the depth and magnitude of the lessons internalized.
These lessons usually developed early on in their lives. As Meir recounted:
From my childhood I understood that the Jewish people were the victim of one of the biggest injustices in the world. Therefore I’m unable to be passive in the face of injustices that occurred to others in my name. I’m sure that if I had been bom in South Africa that I would have taken part in the struggle there for equality. And in this place I am automatically fighting for justice which happens to be on the side of Palestinians. But this doesn’t mean that I’m automatically pro-Palestinians, but that I’m pro-justice.161
159 Zameret, interview by author. 160 Ibid. 161 Meir, interview by author.
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I interviewed eleven individuals who were descendants of survivors, empathetic toward
the Palestinians. All of them took distinctly humanist lessons from the Holocaust,
without exception. All but one of the Holocaust survivors showed considerable concern
about the Israeli treatment toward Palestinians in and outside of Israel proper, and they
engaged in various activities to promote the just and humane treatment of Palestinians.
This became their way of applying the lessons they learned from the Holocaust.
Consider Meir’s response about how the Holocaust affected him:
I was very sensitive especially for minorities in Argentina. For example in my neighborhood lived a community of gypsies. And I identified with the gypsies because I think that now their status in Argentina is like the status of Jews in Poland in the Second World War. So I felt solidarity with these gypsies. And I feel solidarity with the poor people who live in neighborhoods, places where people live in shacks. I feel that even if I come from a very poor family, that I must do something for them. And so I used to give children the old books that I was reading in school. When I finished reading a book, I gave it to them. I was careful not to write in the books so that I could give it to them in good condition.162
If one considers the function served by a humanistic response to the Holocaust, it is the
same function served by the highly militarized response. Both respond to the problem of
the Holocaust. Both honor the dead and the memory of the Holocaust, protecting the
weak and taking action to prevent further injustice. The salient question is: Why did
these individuals adopt the humanist lesson over the support of militaristic ones? The
answer appears to depend both on personality traits and abilities and on role models.
The following personality traits and abilities were demonstrated by essentially all
of those I interviewed: Ability to empathize with others. Ability to challenge authority
and the status quo. Strong internal locus of control. Strong sense of personal
162 Meir, interview by author.
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responsibility. Deep sense of justice for all. Acceptance of weakness. Acceptance of
diversity. Ability to deal with issues and with others in complex terms. Distinct
movement away from the “us” versus “them”, black and white thinking that fosters
strong in-group and out-group delineations. Heightened sensitivity to those in need.
These interviewees, who had empathetic attitudes, had role models, usually
parents or grandparents, who demonstrated and emphasized, sometimes unintentionally,
the humanistic lessons of the Holocaust in their homes.
I discuss these traits and abilities and these role model and their significance in
the next chapter.
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ON EMPATHY
The interviews revealed a most significant finding: most of those I interviewed
possessed an incredibly strong capacity to empathize, both cognitively and affectively,
with almost everyone around them. Meir said that the Holocaust had impacted him in
this way:
I became more sensitive to suffering. Not just to human beings, even to dogs and cats. The question of justice and humanitarian questions, they have been in my mind all the time. All the time I ask myself. When other children think about movies and football, I ask myself questions about human beings and human rights.163
It quickly became apparent that this empathic quality influenced everything, including the
way these individuals related to Germans, to other minorities, to Palestinians, and to their
fellow Israelis. For several of those I met, it even extended to their attitudes toward and
treatment of animals. My interview with Erez paused momentarily so that he could get
an update from his wife on the status of a stray cat that they had taken to an animal
hospital. Adam, Beate, and Miki, I learned, are vegans. Hava’s home proved to be a
haven for man and beast alike. She looks after outdoor strays and has a small army of
felines and a little dog that stay inside with her and her husband. Stella also fed stray
cats. Although I didn’t think anything of it at the time, in retrospect, I think this further
163 Meir, interviewby author. 95
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demonstrates the empathic nature of these individuals and of this pool of people in
general.
In other ways besides their references to the suffering of animals, the interviewees
demonstrated a direct correlation between their empathic capacity and their attitudes and
behaviors. This may be one of the most significant findings explaining why these
individuals have deviated from the stance that “Holocaust justifies all in the name of
defense.” This is the stance of the great majority of Israeli society, shaping Israeli
perspectives, attitudes, and behaviors toward Palestinians. Before I discuss these findings
in detail, I must establish what is meant by “empathy” and why empathy carries such
import.
Realistic and Cognitive Empathy
Psychologists and social scientists have much debated whether empathy signifies
a cognitive or an affective process of engagement and identification with others. Samuel
and Pearl Oliner define empathy as a cognitive process: the “ability to understand what
others are feeling, discriminating among cues to assess others’ emotional states and, at a
more advanced level, assuming the perspective of the other so as to understand his or her
very thoughts and intentions.”164
Peace psychologist Ralph White (1985,1986, 1991) emphasizes the important
role that “realistic” empathy plays in foreign policy and in the prevention of violent
international conflict. “Realistic empathy” is his term for cognitive empathy. He states:
164 Samuel P. Oliner & Pearl M. Oliner, The Altruistic Personality (New York: The Free Press, 1988), 376.
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Empathy is the great corrective for all forms of war-promoting misperception ... It [means] simply understanding the thoughts and feelings of others ... jumping in imagination into another person’s skin, imagining how you might feel about what you saw.165
Empathy in this context enables a better understanding of how to see through the eyes of
another. White emphasizes empathy as understanding the thoughts and feelings of
others, rather than feeling with others.
While I agree with the importance that White places on empathy, I find his
definition of empathy too limited. Hector Bentacourt describes White’s conception of
empathy as “the chess player’s type of empathy, which implies an effort to understand
the situation from the perspective of the others and see their available options.”166
White defines empathy in this way for two reasons: pragmatism and caution. As
he notes, “It is extremely difficult to ‘feel with’ ... an opponent, chiefly because his
hostility to oneself is so genuine and [can be] so genuinely dangerous.”167 Caution comes
into play in that “a plea for warmhearted sympathy ... would be psychologically
naive.”168 This perhaps presents the biggest obstacle faced by scholars who emphasize
the importance of empathy in political science and international relations: the possibility
of not being taken seriously. White most likely describes his conception of empathy as
“realistic” for this reason.
But realistic/cognitive empathy has its limitations and even lends itself to being
exploitive if the process does not contain emotional components. Two examples
165 Ralph K. White, Fearful Warriors: A Psychological Profile of U.S.-Soviet Relations (New York: Free Press, 1984), 160-161. 166 Hector Betancourt, "Attribution-Emotion Processes in White's Realistic Empathy Approach to Conflict and Negotiation,"Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 10, no. 4 (2004): 370. 167White,Fearful Warriors: A Psychological Profile of U.S. -Soviet Relations,425. 168 Ibid.
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illustrate this point by challenging the notion that realistic empathy can prevent
aggression and violent conflict.
For one example, sociopaths have the notorious ability to emulate and imitate
human emotion. They masterfully use realistic empathy to anticipate and manipulate the
feelings and responses of others for their own self-serving ends. Nancy Eisenberg, Qing
Zhou, and their colleagues emphasize the sociopath’s inability to emotively empathize
with others. They find that persons with antisocial personality disorder commonly have
deficits in empathy and remorse.169
In his most recent book, Chain o f Command, Seymour Hersh provides another
example that illustrates the limitations of realistic empathy as a deterrent to aggression.
Hersh reveals how neo-conservatives in the current Bush administration used the book
The Arab Mind, a study of the psychology and culture of Arabs authored by cultural
anthropologist Raphael Patai, to better formulate ways to torture and humiliate Arabs.
This ultimately contributed to the infamous scandals at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.170
White’s conceptual construction of realistic empathy assumes the peripheral
presence of affective empathy. However, as the examples above illustrate, one cannot
safely make this assumption. Realistic empathy thus defined can be used to more
effectively harm and manipulate others through a more complete understanding of their
vulnerabilities. Realistic empathy cannot account for the affective component.
169 Zhou, Qing and Nancy Eisenberg, Sandra H. Losoya, Richard A. Fabes, Mark Reiser, Ivanna K. Guthrie, Bridget C. Murphy, Amanda J. Cumberland, and Stephanie A. Shepard, "The Relations of Parental Warmth and Positive Expressiveness to Children's Empathy-Related Responding and Social Functioning: A Longitudinal Study,"Child Development 73, no. 3 (2002): 894. 170Seymour M. Hersh,Chain of Command (New York: HarperCollins Publisher, 2005), 38-39.
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Affective Empathy
Since the 1960s, developmental and social psychologists have used emotional
meanings to define empathy. Empathy began to be defined as congruent vicarious
emotions, as C. Batson and Laura Shaw call emotions “that are more other-focused than
self-focused, including feelings of sympathy, compassion, [and] tenderness .”171 They
note that in this definition, “empathy” is what many philosophers and early psychologists
have labeled sympathy, compassion, pity, and tenderness.”172 Summarizing many
others’ findings, Qing Zhou explains that empathy, defined as an affective response, and
related responses, like sympathy, have been linked conceptually with moral development,
altruistic and prosocial behavior, social competence, and low levels of externalizing
problems.173
For the purposes of analyzing empathic responses and processes in those I
interviewed, I considered process-based empathic behavior to be central in producing
empathic responses, both cognitive and affective perspective-taking, along with a
physical response. In this paper, I use a definition supplied by Qing Zhou: Empathy is an
“affective reaction that stems from the apprehension or comprehension of another’s
emotional state or condition, and that is identical or very similar to what the other person
is feeling or would be expected to feel.”174
171 C. Daniel Batson and Laura L. Shaw, "Evidence for Altruism: Toward a Pluralism of Prosocial Motives,"Psychological Inquiry 2, no. 2 (1991): 113. 172 Ibid. 173 Zhou: 893. 174 Ibid.
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Patricia Oswald defines perspective-taking as “a multidimensional construct that
can be organized conceptually and methodologically into three categories: perceptual,
cognitive, and affective.” 1 7S Her “cognitive perspective-taking” echoes what White
defines as realistic empathy. Oswald notes that cognitive perspective-taking has been
“conceptualized as the ability to recognize and understand the thoughts of other.”176
Affective perspective-taking Oswald defines as “the ability to identify and
understand how another person is feeling.”177 She mentions that multiple studies have
suggested that “affective perspective-taking plays a greater role in empathic arousal and
altruistic responding than do other forms of perspective taking.”178
Empathy as an Impediment to Aggression and Dehumanization
As previously referenced, and as noted by Hector Betancourt, a multitude of
studies have examined the significance of empathy “in moral judgment, social justice,
and the structural factors relevant to cooperation and peace.”179 Betancourt mentions
that empathy has been shown to deter violent behavior, and some have even linked
empathic responses to altruistic actions, although much debate remains over whether or
not humans are truly capable of altruistic behaviors. However, studies reviewed and
summarized by Batson and Shaw have established that when one evokes empathic
175 Patricia A. Oswald, "The Effects of Cognitive and Affective Perspective Taking on Empathic Concern and Altruistic Helping," The Journal o f Social Psychology 136, no. 5 (1996): 613. 176Ibid.: 614. 177Ibid. 178Ibid. l79Betancourt, "Attribution-Emotion Processes in White's Realistic Empathy Approach to Conflict and Negotiation," 371.
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responses in people, those individuals experience an overwhelming tendency to engage in
helping, prosocial behavior.180
A few scientists from the Chicago group who morally opposed the use of the
atomic bomb after completing work on it are a striking example of the influence that
cognitive and affective perspective-taking have in eliciting empathy and thereby
motivating individuals to take action. Robert Lifton and Richard Falk write of these
scientists:
[The] reflections [of the opposing scientists] were informed precisely by a beginning capacity to imagine and feel what might occur at the other end of the weapon. Eugene Rabinowitch, five years later, recalled how, “In the summer of 1945, some of us walked the streets of Chicago vividly imagining the sky suddenly lit by a giant fireball, the steel skeletons of skyscrapers bending into grotesque shapes and their masonry raining into the streets below, until a great cloud of dust arose and settled over the crumbling city.” And he goes on to say that, “From this vision arose the weak and inadequate attempts that groups of scientists made to stop the hands of the clock before it struck the first hour of the atomic age.”181
Former army Ranger and paratrooper turned psychologist, Lt. Col. Dave
Grossman, writes that, “it has long been understood that there is a direct relationship
between the empathic and physical proximity of the victim, and the resultant difficulty
and trauma of the kill.”182 Grossman asserts the existence of a “powerful, innate human
resistance toward killing one’s own species.”183 Grossman cites the extensive historical
documentation that “only 15 to 20 percent of the American riflemen in combat during
World War II would fire at the enemy. Those who would not fire did not run or hide ...
but they simply would not fire their weapons at the enemy.” Grossman concludes that
180 Shaw, "Evidence for Altruism: Toward a Pluralism of Prosocial Motives." 181 Robert Jay Lifton and Richard A. Falk, "On Numbing and Feeling," inCulture, Communication and Conflict, ed. Gary R. Weaver (Boston: Pearson Publishing, 2000), 405. 182 Grossman,98. 183Ibid.,xxix.
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“there is within most men an intense resistance to killing their fellow man. A resistance
so strong that, in many circumstances, soldiers on the battlefield will die before they can
overcome it.”184
Grossman points out that killing requires average individuals to employ
psychological defense mechanisms that distance them psychically and physically from
the reality of their actions. He says that “the pilots, navigators bombardiers, and gunners
in ... aircraft were able to bring themselves to k ill... civilians primarily through
application of the mental leverage provided to them by the distance factor” He speaks of
the way distance factors facilitate for these individuals a denial of their roles in
devastating bombings, like that of Hamburg where 70,000 died; Dresden where an
estimated 80,000 died; Tokyo where the firebombing killed 250,000, Hiroshima where an
estimated 70,000 were killed by the atom bomb. Grossman claims that “intellectually,
they understood the horror of what they were doing. Emotionally, the distance involved
permitted them to deny it.” Grossman writes that “from a distance, I can deny your
humanity; and from a distance, I cannot hear your screams.”185
Just as physical proximity directly correlates with the ease or difficulty of killing,
emotional-psychological distance or proximity can also make killing easy or difficult.
When a given interaction elicits a high level of empathy, the compulsion to respond
humanely to another person can be overpowering. Dehumanization protects oneself from
a potentially empathic relationship with others and subsequently permits violent attitudes
and behaviors. As James Blight and Janet Lang note:
184 Ibid.,4 185 Ibid.,101-102.
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Too little empathy can produce too much “moral clarity.” And too much “moral clarity” can make conflict, killing, and catastrophe more likely, by making them seem less horrible than they really are or by offering the illusion that any killing of the enemy is done to eradicate evil and to establish that which is good. 1 8 A
As Sam Keen observes, “We demean our enemies not because we are instinctively
sadistic, but because it is difficult for us to kill others whom we fully recognize as human
beings.” 187 The concept of empathic-emotional proximity provides a useful theoretical
framework with which to understand what enables and prevents dehumanization and
violent conflict.
Lifton and Falk (1983) write about this process of empathic detachment which
they call psychic numbing. They note that neurophysiologists have shown that one’s
brain works to filter the input of too much stimuli just as it works to retain information.188
These scholars state that “psychic and physical survival require a balance between
feeling and not feeling ... that balance can readily go out of kilter, causing us to feel
either too much or too little.” 1 80 This balance employs “a number of classical
psychoanalytic defense mechanisms: repression, suppression, isolation, denial, undoing,
reaction formation, and projection, among others, according to Lifton and Falk.”190
Lifton developed this concept from his experience interviewing survivors of the atomic
bomb in Hiroshima. He recounts:
In Hiroshima, people I interviewed told me how, when the bomb fell, they were aware of people dying around them in horrible ways but that, within
186 James G. Blight and Janet M. Lang, "Lesson Number One: "Empathize with Your Enemy","Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 10, no. 4 (2004): 365. 187 Sam Keen, "Faces o f the Enemy," inCulture, Communication and Conflict, ed. Gary R. Weaver (Boston: Pearson Publishing, 2000), 410. 188 Lifton and Falk, "On Numbing and Feeling,"404. 189 Ibid.
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minutes or even seconds, they simply ceased to feel. They said such things as “I simply became insensitive to human death,” or referred to it as “paralysis of the mind.” I came to call this general process psychic numbing and, in its most acute form, psychic closing-off. For survivors it was a necessary defense mechanism, since they could not have experienced full emotions in response to such scenes and remained sane. The numbing entailed derealization of what was actually happening ... the numbing process did not necessarily end when the immediate danger was over ... Observing victims, I began to wonder about the numbing that must take place in those who make, test, or anticipate the use of nuclear weapons. For potential perpetrators simply cannot afford to imagine what really happens to people at the other end of the weapon.191
Empathy Applied
In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and in a world with protracted violent conflicts,
remaining empathic is a great challenge. Yet the majority of those I interviewed had
managed to meet this challenge in spite of living in a cultural, social, and psychological
situation that numbing would have made easier.
These people could not choose the easy way out after having put themselves
emotionally and cognitively in the positions of others. In fact, 17 of the 18 individuals I
interviewed showed remarkable agility in the application of empathy. Below, I provide
examples of their empathic encounters with a variety of “enemy-others.”
Hava on Germany. I asked Hava how she thought it possible for Germans to have
done what they did during the World War II. She told me the following:
My private idea - 1 don’t know if true - why it happened in Germany was because ... if you look at history, you’ve heard of the Thirty Years War. The war was in Germany. About one third of the German people were killed in this war. Do you know the story of Hansel and Gretel? Everybody knows this story. You take out the chocolate and the nice things, and when you leave only the bones of the story, the story says,
191 Ibid.
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[how] in the house there was not enough food for the parents and the children. So the parents throw out the children, so that the food will be enough for them. And the children go to the woods, and there was a woman who was catching people and eating them, but there were two of them, and she was only one, and they succeeded in eating her. This is what the German children were brought up with for hundreds of years. And this is not the only story. If you take all of the stories, they are like this. There is always this horror of hunger, and the horror of what happened to them. And I think that just like the people here right now are quite ready to be horrible to the Palestinians, because we have suffered the Holocaust, and it should never again happen to us, the same it was with the Germans. I’m not sure that this is the reason, but I think that it is connected to the Holocaust. Horror doesn’t make people better, it makes themt worse. 192
Hava could never bring herself to travel to Germany. Yet she completely humanizes the
Germans and can empathize with them despite this aversion.
Veronika on Hamas. The Palestinian elections took place during the course of my
stay in Israel, and I saw Hamas democratically elected into power. At the nunnery where
I stayed while in Jerusalem, I heard the other guests discussing in hushed and horrified
whispers the outcome of the election. Security measures heightened immediately after
the elections. Soldiers did random ID checks on some of the major streets, which seemed
a deliberate attempt to intensify social hysteria and fear.
Many in and outside of Israel thought that the election of Hamas provided sure
fire proof of the Palestinian desire to annihilate the Jews.193 Veronika offered a
refreshing perspective on this topic:
In some ways Hamas is like Shaz, an Israeli [group] that is kind of a combination of religion, politics, and social services. It provides daycare for free, meals for children in schools, things that the secular left should provide. There [are] no unemployment [benefits] for Palestinians, and
192 Hava, interview by author. 193 "U.S. Senator Richard G. Lugar (R-in) Holds a Hearing on the Middle East after the Palestinian Elections," inSenate Foreign Relations Committee (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 2006).
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there’s huge unemployment. I honestly don’t know how they live. I don’t know how they survive. The unemployment is - 1 don’t remember the numbers - but it is something horrendous. Even those who work earn peanuts. Healthcare is expensive - life is totally impossible, and Hamas seems to be the only big, organized group that’s trying to address things. So people kind of want to say, “Thank you for taking care of us when we were sick and hungry.” I think that you can say that the people didn’t elect a terrorist group. I think it’s a kind of ethnocentrism - we think that the only thing that is important about Hamas is what relates to us. We see Hamas as a terrorist group, they see Hamas as a social-action group. Because that’s what’s important to them.194
Suicide bombers: Zameret on Palestinian despair. Zameret told me about the
difficulty of being stationed in the territories during her years of service. After she
finished her service, she immediately joined Women in Black, a feminist peace
organization, to protest the occupation, which I think has never strayed from her mind.
She said:
I think I was 30 back then, and it struck me, “Wow, I’m 30 and there is someone who is 30 in Gaza, or wherever, and all his life he was living under occupation. I mean, we can’t even [begin to] understand that. The fact that you can never go wherever you want, the fact that you have to always carry your ID. A policeman or a soldier can stop me whenever he wants and ask me whatever he wants, detain me wherever he wants, and I can’t do anything about it. Besides that, there is really nothing to eat at home. And he sees his parents - especially his father - trying to earn enough to feed the family, and he can’t, and that’s humiliating for him. And many of [his] friends are dead, or wounded, or in jail, or whatever. Sometimes he can’t even go to school because the army decided that today the school is closed. There is no hope for these people. So why not take a bomb and bomb the bus of the people that are doing this to you? Again, if I was there I don’t know how I would behave ... [Here, she recommends a documentary called Ama’s Children.] ... The thing that most woke me up was that there was no hope in the life of these kids [as portrayed in the documentary]. They didn’t care if they died or if they killed. There’s no value to their life. Human life had no value. For me this was the strongest emotion that I got from this movie. And then I realized that if your life doesn’t count anymore, then of course my life doesn’t count to you, so it would be much easier to do it [suicide bombings]. And we did this to
194 Veronika, interview by author.
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them. They didn’t do it - we did it to them. This is really our 100 percent responsibility, and we did it to them. So this is why I can sympathize - well, not sympathize because I would prefer that they didn’t bomb. But this is why I can empathize with them, and why I can really understand it. But you can’t really say that out loud in Israel because they’ll think you’re crazy.195
Israeli society views suicide bombers with utter contempt because of the civilian lives
they claim as well as the general climate of fear they instill. One cannot help but think
about the possibility that this might be one’s last bus ride whenever one steps onto a bus
in Jerusalem. Suicide bombers may be one of the most demonized facets of the
Palestinian resistance. Zameret’s willingness to consider their perspective and
experience - to say nothing of pointing out the role Israel plays in provoking these
actions - is an exceedingly rare phenomenon in Israel.
Beate on Iran and Holocaust denial. Beate told me that she had no problem
understanding why the Iranian president would deny the Holocaust in light of the way
Israeli politicians exploit the Holocaust. She explained:
It’s natural that somebody stands up against it, and feels that he wants to say exactly the things which are forbidden to say. And also this comment, when the Western world feels so guilty towards the Jews, after all what happened to them in Europe, why doesn’t Germany give them a part of their land? Why does it have to be taken from our land? This is what I always said to myself, before I became politically active, and realized that it was useless in the political debate.196
All of these individuals had complex ways of thinking about social phenomena
and people. They did not think of others in black and white terms. This appeared in the
way they spoke of some of the more contentious topics in Israeli society today: Hamas,
Iran, suicide bombers.
195 Zameret, interview by author. 196 Beate, interview by author.
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While in Israel, I found it quite surprising that most people could not fathom why
the Palestinians might act out against Israel. Israelis had a complete disconnect. The
evils attributed to Hamas, Iran, and suicide bombers took on mythic proportions. Israelis
referred to them as so evil that they could not begin to understand them and frequently
thought of them also as primitive and uncivilized; bestial.
One evening when I was at the convent, while preparing my dinner, the women
using the same space to prepare their dinner started talking about the terrible fact that a
terrorist organization had been elected. I pointed out that Menachem Begin once led a
terrorist organization - the Irgun gang, notorious for their role in the massacre at Deir
Yassin - and he became Prime Minister. Needless to say, they did not appreciate my
comment.
“You know what the main difference is between terrorist and freedom fighter?”
asked Hava. “Is that person for me, or against me? If he is for me, then he is a freedom
fighter. If he is against me, then he is a terrorist... [or when they] are not legal, they are
labeled a terrorist. When he’s legal, it’s called the army.”197
Development of Empathy in Childhood
Psychologist have discovered that between the ages of two and three, children
begin to empathize. As Willa Litvak-Miller and Daniel McDougall state,
[They] perceive that others have feelings and perceptions that differ from their own ... Children at this stage are able to experience sympathetic distress and act on it in a way that is shaped by their recognition that the other’s needs may not be the same as their own ... By late childhood, the
197 Hava, interview by author.
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child should be capable of empathizing with a wide spectrum of emotions, even in the absence of a victim.198
Scientists continue to debate over whether empathy has heritable components, or
whether its development reflects a certain socialization process and upbringing. In their
study of children’s feelings in relation to parents’ feelings, Janet Strayer and William
Roberts discovered that “parental empathy plays a much more important role in the
development of children’s empathy than suggested by previous research.”199
However, Paul Miller’s and Jansen op de Haar’s study supports a basis for a
genetic component. Their study finds that “individual differences in young children’s
capacity for empathy and altruism” exist, and that this “has heritable components and
may be related to early temperament.”200 Much remains to be learned about the factors
that influence the development of empathy; both nature and nurture likely come into play.
Qing Zhou summarizes studies on this and writes that there is some evidence that genetic
factors produce some of the variation in empathy responses, but the home environment,
and especially the example of parents and their interactions with their children, are likely
to have a greater effect.201
According to Louise Derman-Sparks, other scholarship agrees with Qing Zhou.
She notes that those studying identity development in children, in conjunction with
198 Willa Litvak-Miller and Daniel McDougall, "The Structure of Empathy During Middle Childhood and Its Relationship to Prosocial Behavior,"Genetic, Social & General Psychology Monographs 123, no. 3 (1997): 303. 199 Janet Strayer and William Roberts, "Children's Anger, Emotional Expressiveness, and Empathy: Relations with Parents' Empathy, Emotional Expressiveness, and Parenting Practices,"Social Development 13, no. 2 (2004): 247. 200 Paul A. Miller and Marian A. Jansen op de Haar, "Emotional, Cognitive, Behavioral, and Temperament Characteristics of High-Empathy Children," Motivation and Emotion 21, no. 1 (1997): 109. 201 Zhou: 893.
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attitudes and bias development, find evidence of the importance of parents and the impact
they have on developing ethics of caring. Derman-Sparks writes that studies show
.... the roots of bias begin early in life. Around three and four years of age, children become aware that differences in color, language, gender, and physical abilities are connected with levels of privilege and of power. Spoken and unspoken messages about the differences and similarities in people have a profound influence on children’s developing sense of self and of others.
Many of those I interviewed traced the formation of their perspectives, feelings, and
attitudes toward others, including traditional “enemy-others” such as Germans and
Palestinians, etc., back to the way their parents taught and modeled how to consider the
other. Veronika related a significant experience that serves as a poignant example of this.
Parental influence on empathy. Veronika and her mother lived in a ghetto in
Budapest while her father worked in a forced labor camp. During the war, her father’s
Gentile business partner looked after her parents’ business assets. “He saved everything
they had so that after the war they could start their business again,” she told me. “And
this is stuff that he [my father] would share with my kids so that they wouldn’t come to a
conclusion that human beings are beasts, and that life is meaningless, because you don’t
want a child to get that kind of a message about life.”203
I asked Veronika how she thought the Holocaust had affected her identity today.
She answered, “You can either respond [to the Holocaust] by saying, ‘I have to defend
myself because everybody is out there to get me,’ or you could say, ‘what was done to us
was so horrible I have to make sure that doesn’t happen to anybody else.’”
202 Louise Derman-Sparks, "Antibias Education: Toward a World o f Justice and Peace," inThe Handbook of Interethnic Coexistence, ed. Eugene Weiner (New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 2002), 400. 203 Veronika, interview by author.
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She described for me a significant incident that that she hypothesized had
influenced the way she responded to the Holocaust. Veronika said,
I remember a very important conversation I had with my father. I must have been 5 or 6 years old. And I asked him, ‘How did this happen? Why are the Germans such terrible people?’ ... I was not even in school yet, and I remember my father tried to explain to me - how what happened to the Germans after World War I is what turned them into what they became; how they were so oppressed and life was so miserable that they lost their humanity. And that made really a huge impression on me, that my parents [gave me] a sense that it came from something, that you oppress someone enough they lose their humanity. That is really a conversation that I remember to this day. And I remember asking my father what in Germany made life so horrible. And he said that they didn’t have enough food, and they weren’t allowed to sell what they produced - and those things actually made sense to me as a small child.”204
Veronika also told me about a second experience that greatly influenced her
perception of Germans:
I was in first grade and we were taken to see a German circus with my class. And as we got near there, we saw a huge group of people bunching around somebody. It was a big attraction that everybody wanted to see, and I was there pushing my way up to see what it was. Somebody said, ‘There’s a German little girl there!’ And I was trying to imagine what does a German little girl look like? And I really sort of expected some monster with fire coming out of her head; and I got close enough and she looked like a little girl! That was really a kind of a major revelation for me. I was 6 or 7 years old then, and I remember going home and telling my parents that I saw a German little girl and that she looks like every other little girl! And my parents said, ‘Of course she does! She is like any other girl.’ That had to be processed together with everyday hearing, ‘The Germans, the Germans, the Germans.’ And here was this child, and she was just like me. So how could that have happened? I think these things probably pushed me into one direction rather than another direction.205
Like Veronika, nearly every individual I interviewed spoke of parental attitudes
and actions toward others as having significantly influenced their activism. For those
Ibid. ‘Ibid.
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bom in Israel, it established the groundwork for their efforts to see the Palestinians as
equal human beings who needed to be treated as such.
Zameret told me, “Even if she doesn’t know it, it all started from my mom. I was
going to the First of May demonstration as a small child. She probably didn’t even
realize what she was doing,” Zameret said with a laugh. “I grew up in a house that said
that all men are created equal, and that we should treat all fairly,” Zameret continued.
“This is a thing very particular to Israel, because on the side of this notion I was also
growing up with, ‘The Arabs are bad, they are our enemies and we should kill them.’”206
Zameret identified with the former message, which reflected her own sentiments,
and not the latter. Zameret told me that she had a sense of this from a very early age:
I remember when I was in the third grade; we were talking about who we should get married to. And I remember I said that I will marry whoever I love, that it doesn’t matter if it will be a German, or whatever. And they said, ‘You would marry a non-Jew?’ And I said ‘Yes, I’d marry an Arab if I loved.’ And they said, ‘Even an Arab?’ And I remember thinking that something was very wrong with this question. I felt that something was wrong with this environment, but I couldn’t exactly explain to myself what it was.207
Miki related stories from early childhood. “My grandmother used to put me to
sleep with Holocaust stories,” Miki told me. “She had a really interesting way of telling
[me how] she escaped from the ghetto. She would talk about how [when she was
escaping] she walked with the cows and fell asleep, how everything was nice, and how
they used to make butter in the village, and how she saw men get shot for the first time in
her life.208
206 Zameret, interview by author. 207 Ibid. 208 Miki, interview by author, tape recording, Haifa, Israel, 5 February 2006.
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I asked Miki how she thought this had influenced her. “In an unusual way,” she
said. “Most of her stories were very much full of very, very good people that hid her and
helped her. And that kind of impacted [me] a lot - you know, when you’re a child
growing up, your role model from the story is the good Polish woman that hides the little
Jewish girl. But also from a very early age, [I developed] a very, very deep realization
that racism is really wrong.”209
Talma also spoke of the influence her parents had in shaping her attitudes from a
young age. “When my parents talked to me about the importance of being honest and
just, and just always [to be able to] look in the mirror and see a clean image - not lying
and all of that - it was basically on a very profound human base, and not specifically on
the Holocaust issue.”210
Talma’s mother, also a leftist, once told Talma,
You’re so lucky that you live in Haifa and you know the Arabs, and you have Arab friends and you can talk to them and meet them. I live in a place where the only Arabs I see are the ones that sell the apples or clean the streets, and I’m so frustrated having lived in Israel without having really known Arabs as equal persons next to me.211
In this statement, Talma’s mother exhibits the tolerance and acceptance of others around
which Talma grew up. This further illustrates that even people who have never
personally known Palestinians saw them as equal persons. I discussed this previously
when relaying the limitations of the contact hypothesis in explaining this empathic
phenomenon.
209 Miki, interview by author. 210 Talma, interview by author. 2,1 Ibid.
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In Derman-Sparks’ study of antibias education, we read that “children form their
ideas about diversity through their contact with the socially prevailing ideas about various
groups even more than by actual contact with individual members of groups different
from their own.” Thus, familial attitudes combined with empathic personality traits
help determine how open these individuals are to others. The added element of knowing
members from this minority group, which many do, reinforces this sense of shared
humanity.
Perceiving “enemy-others” with empathy has its challenges and says a lot about a
person. It indicates that they feel comfortable with complexity and with difference, and
that they are themselves emotionally open to others. People with rigid “us-them” identity
constructions cannot perceive “enemy-others” empathically. The individuals I
interviewed can deal with complexity without being threatened by it. Miki spoke of this
complexity to which I just referred, when speaking about her mixed feelings towards her
grandfather. “I still find it very difficult to talk about the Nakba. I don’t know what my
grandfather’s role was in the Nakba - in the deportation of people from Haifa. I know
that he was in the Haganah. He’s dead now, I can’t ask him.”213 Her present interest in
Germany reflects her feelings towards her grandfather. “A lot of my interests in
Germany are not so much about its Nazi past,” she said, “as much as it is with dealing
with the Nazi past; dealing with the guilt, dealing with the meaning of the collective
memory and action, and the constant tension of loving people who might have done
horrible things.”214
212 Ibid 213 Miki, interview by author. 214 Ibid.
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Their empathic capacity further enhances the ways they care for and consider the
welfare of Palestinians. As discussed in the beginning of this chapter, empathically
identifying with another in need generally motivates a person to help, which is
demonstrated by the actions these individuals have taken. Considering the ever-present
context of the Holocaust, we can see that a remarkable capacity for empathy is shown in
the way these individuals have taken up the Palestinian cause and in the fact that doing so
does not threaten them. They can look past the simplistic and mythical perceptions
prevalent in Israeli society to see the human where others can only imagine monsters.
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ON DISRUPTING THE STATUS QUO AND CHALLENGING AUTHORITY
Zameret’s teacher threw her out of a ninth-grade biology class for challenging his
attitudes toward Palestinians. “I was raised to be very independent,” Zameret told me. “I
have always been a woman who has a lot of problems with authority. I’m not talking
about the law,” she continued. “I’m talking about my teacher, my army captain. It’s very
hard for me to be bossed. So I was all the time in the army rebelling and I got a lot of
complaints about it.”215
Not only Zameret possessed this quality; no one else I interviewed had any
problem, either, with challenging authority or the status quo. These individuals followed
their own internal moral compasses and sense of responsibility, not external standards.
For example, Talma, like Miki and Zameret, is an ardent feminist. She has challenged
the status quo for most of her life; in small and big ways. She told me:
I [used to] never go outside the home without makeup, or without heels. It was my own discovery. I threw it all away. I didn’t want to be a sexual, aesthetical object - stop all of this bullshit, you know? For years I felt myself ugly ... So it took a lot of fight, but I’m very dogmatic so once I believed something I had to do it... As feminists we try to free ourselves of the product that society has been trying to sell us. We try to free ourselves from the product that society puts in our head, what we [often mistake for our free will and] our choice. Bullshit. That’s the strength of
215 Zameret, interview by author. 116
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it - that we think we have free will and we choose. But we were educated on what is the right way, what is the nice way, what is beautiful.216
Talma’s effort to support justice for Palestinians originates with her feminist philosophy.
“You cannot fight for the rights of one group, [seeking] equality and rights for
everybody, and then take away the rights of another group,” she said, referring to the
Palestinians. “You just don’t have your case if you do that.”217
Miki refused to serve in the army when she came of age. “I didn’t want them,
they didn’t want me,” she told me. She went and told them that she was a pacifist.
“They kind of look at you, and they tell you, ‘Ok, go to the psychiatrist and we’ll find out
the disease.’” Miki went to see a psychiatrist. “On the psychiatric evaluation two words
appeared,” Miki said. “‘Pacifist’ and ‘vegan.’ It’s a mental illness in Israel to be a
pacifist.”218
Men frequently experience more difficultly in escaping the clutches of the Israeli
military than women. Adam found his way out with the assistance of spray paint. Adam,
on reserve duty when the first Intifada began in April, 1988, worked in the kitchen and
part time on guard duty. Every day Adam heard devastating news from the territories.
“At that time there were Palestinian boys who were throwing Palestinian flags over the
city wires. Soldiers were taking the first boy they saw, and forcing him to climb, and pull 10 of the flags with their bare hands. Some people were electrocuted.” The soldiers with
him at the time laughed about it, which only added to Adam’s discontent. “That made
me very frustrated that I’m in fact stuck here in the belly of the beast, I’m doing
216 Talma, interview by author. 217 Talma, interview by author. 218 Miki, interview by author. 219 Adam, interview by author.
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something which is not at all connected - washing dishes - but still I’m a part of [it, I’m]
a very small screw in this very terrible machine.”
He began to brainstorm about solutions. The day happened to be Holocaust
Memorial Day, and everyone in the kitchen was listening to testimonies of the Holocaust
survivors. It just so happened that a survivor from the same ghetto as Adam’s mother
was speaking. “He was telling about how they were starving and they were looking for
food in the garbage cans, and exactly when he was telling me this testimony, I got this
order to take a normal pot of soup, with enough in it for 30 people, and throw it to the
garbage.” Adam knew that sanitary reasons required this, but it only incited him further.
From this mix of events, he developed the idea of writing graffiti on tanks, which he did
over two nights, on at least 117 tanks. On the tanks, Adam said he wrote, “Soldiers of the
Israeli Defense Forces, refuse to be oppressors and occupiers, refuse to serve in the
occupied territories.”220
At first Adam thought he might have gotten away with his act. But then the
military police went around asking all of the soldiers, “Do you know any leftists around
here?” Someone told the police that a leftist who worked in the kitchen was always
getting into political debates. “So three days after I had finished this writing, I thought
that I had gotten away with it,” Adam recollected. “It was just after dinner and I was
standing in front of the sink, and there was a whole pile of dirty dishes to wash. And then
there came the sergeant who said, ‘Keller there is somebody here to see you.’ I went out
and there were two military policemen. And they said, ‘Come with us please.’ So
220 Ibid.
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somebody else had to wash the dishes.”221 Standing for justice in a military situation can
be achieved through more ways than graffiti on tanks. A simple refusal to cooperate with
injustice when it demands obeisance can also realize this goal.
Another interviewee, Dan, relayed one such incident to me, a time when he had “a
real conflict with the army,” as he put it.222 Dan was a major in the army and he
explained to me that when they hold trials for “terrorists” - when these individuals are
fortunate enough to be able to have a trial - three decision-makers preside, a judge and
two officers from the army, for the sake of meeting international standards. But as Dan
stated, “There’s no justice in these trials. And the officers are just picked [randomly;] it’s
your turn, go sit next to the judge on a certain trial.” The time came for Dan to serve next
to the judge. He had just come from a mission in which they hunted a terrorist group
near Hebron that had managed to evade them. Dan said:
I came from the field and straight to this trial. All of the evidence against the person who was on trial, came from the FBI - Shabak. I kept asking the guy that brought the evidence, can you show us pictures or bring us artifacts? He said, “No, no. What I say is true.” There was no evidence. I thought there should be some kind of evidence. And the judge kept nudging me with his elbow, and said, “Let’s continue, let’s go, let’s finish this, there are more files to deal with.” I kept asking and asking. The more we went into this trial, I actually realized that there is no real justice here. Someone had decided that this guy has to sit in jail, and we are just playing a justice game as if it is a trial. There were some incidents where the judge had to sign documents at the end of the day, and he wrote his opinion, and we had to sign. The other officer signed, and I said, “No, I want to read it first.” And they said, “Oh come on, it’s 5 o’clock, let’s go home. Sign it now and read it tomorrow.” I said no, I’m not signing. The first day he said, “Okay,” and then called his wife to say that there is some crazy guy here. So I read it, and even wrote some notes on what he wrote, and I signed. And when we came toward the end of the trial I said there’s no way I’m going to finish, I’m going to quit. And quitting meant that
221 Ibid. 222 Dan, interview by author.
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they would have to start the whole trial from the beginning, because the three judges have to be [there] and have to listen to all of the evidence from the beginning. And they went crazy, the military justice people. [But I told them,] “How can I be a judge? I came from the field hunting these people, where the orders were, if I see them I shoot them, and now you want me to sit as a judge, and have a fair trial? I have an opinion on this guy before I came in. I had an opinion a few hours before I came. And I refused [to continue]. And I wrote letters, and they told me that I’d be on trial and that they’d fire me, and all kinds of things, and I refused. I tried to find out what happened to the guy, but never really managed to get the permission. Someone told me that they released him, but I’m not sure that it’s true ... [but maybe so] because they didn’t want to go though the whole procedure again. 23
Scholars Milgram,224 Zimbardo,225 and Asch226 establish the importance of asking
questions, challenging authority, and trusting one’s own senses. Individuals who possess
these qualities and capabilities can make life-and-death differences for those around
them, as Dan’s experience with the justice system illustrated. Some man today may be
free because Dan had the strength of will and integrity not to participate in an essentially
rigged trial. There may also be a Palestinian out there who hates Jews a little less
because of it.
In another act of civil disobedience, interviewees Adam and Beate and some of
their associates, slept at Arafat’s compound on two different occasions in order to protect
him from probable imminent attack ordered by Sharon. Adam and Beate went to
Ramallah along with some others to act as human shields, because Sharon had been
talking quite openly about sending commandos to capture or kill Arafat. The first time,
they stayed in Arafat’s compound in May 2002. They returned again in September 2003.
“We feel that if we had saved Arafat, then we saved the life of many Israelis, because if
223 Ibid. 224 Milgram, Obedience to Authority. 225 Zimbardo, The Stanford Prison Experiment: A Simulation Study of Prison Psychology(accessed). 226 S.E. Asch, Social Psychology (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1952).
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Arafat had been assassinated by Israel, then all of the [Palestinian] factions would have
been competing with each other over who would kill more Israelis [in their move to gain
Palestinian public support],” Adam said.
“There would have been total chaos, even bigger,” Beate added. “There would
have been no Palestinian Authority left, no elections, no government - nothing.”
Like Sheep to the Slaughter: Israeli Culture on Weakness
I discovered that a major theme in Israeli culture is strength versus weakness.
Jews during the World War II are commonly compared to sheep going to the slaughter,
because they did not resist. In the second chapter, I referenced Israeli psychoanalysts -
Moses 997 and Stem 998 - who believe that the Holocaust left a deep sense of shame and
humiliation in the Jewish-Israelis’ psyche because of the helplessness and trauma
experienced by so many people, seemingly without resistance. Moses and Stem also
suggested that these feelings impeded the mourning process. This perception of
weakness and shame remains a deep wound, one which young Jewish-Israeli men feel
especially inclined to compensate for or disprove. As Kakar writes on the connection
between helplessness and aggression:
If all possibilities of self assertion are closed, there is a feeling of absolute helplessness, a state which must be changed through assertive action. Such a regression, with its accompanying feelings of vulnerability and helplessness, is most clearly manifested in the sphere of group aggression which takes on, overtly and covertly, the flavour of narcissistic rage ... the group’s need of undoing the damage to the collective self by whatever means, and a deeply anchored, unrelenting compulsion in the pursuit of this aim give it no rest. Narcissistic rage does not vanish when the
227 R. Moses, "An Israeli Psychologist Looks Back in 1983,"Psychoanalytic in Reflections on the Holocaust: Selected Essays, ed. S. A. Luel & P. Marcus (New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1984). 228 Stem, "Personal Communication with V.D. Volkan."
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offending object disappears. The painful memory can linger on, making the hot rage a chronic, cold resentment till it explodes in all its violent manifestations whenever historical circumstances sanction such eruptions. 229
I did not foresee the centrality of this issue, yet because of the open-ended nature
of my questions I discovered how important an issue it really is in Israeli society. Those I
interviewed interpreted the issue much differently from mainstream Israeli society; they
accepted and defended the concept of “sheep.”
First I must establish why I thought this an important finding. In the Israeli
context, the Jewish “sheep” referenced here represent vulnerability, helplessness, and
naivete: in other words, weakness. While in Israel I spoke with a soldier in one of the
elite commando units in Israel. When I mentioned the Holocaust, he told me that the
Holocaust marked one of the primary reasons he joined the elite forces. “We say that
now the Holocaust cannot happen because we are in the army, and we have a strong army
and we can defend ourselves.” He also told me during the course of our conversation that
he did not understand why Jews during the Second World War died passively like sheep,
and had always wondered why they had.
People find nothing wrong with self defense. However, they meet “weakness”
with revulsion. Consider for a moment the famous study performed by Adomo, Frenkel-
Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford, that resulted in the book The Authoritarian
Personality, initially published in 1950. The study, funded by the American Jewish
Committee, enlisted some of the best minds to develop an understanding of how the
Holocaust could happen in a modem society like Germany. Adomo writes:
229 Kakar, The Colours o f Violence,216-217.
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[How,] in a culture of law, order, and reason, there should have survived the irrational remnants of ancient racial and religious hatreds? ... What tissues in the life of our modem society remain cancerous, and despite our assumed enlightenment show the incongruous atavism of ancient peoples? And what within the individual organism responds to certain stimuli in our culture with attitudes and acts of destructive aggression?
The Authoritarian Personality responds to these questions; the researchers discovered
fascist roots within this personality type. The work itself considers the psyche of the
individual. In The Authoritarian Personality the authors draw a composite of people with
authoritarian leanings. Among other things, authoritarian-inclined persons identify with
the strong and disdain the weak. Alan Wolfe notes this work’s alarming report that
“people who seemed exceptionally conventional on the outside could be harboring
radically intolerant thoughts on the inside.”231 Meanwhile, Leslie Downing and Nanci
Russo Monaco reference this work in their article, stating, “Individuals who score high
on a measure of the authoritarian personality (Adomo et al., 1950) are expected to be
ethnocentric and, consequently, should be inclined to judgmental biases related to in-
group/out-group distinctions.”
The defeat and humiliation that Germany experienced in and after the First World
War gave birth to Nazi Nationalism. The perfect Aryan typology became increasingly
popular during this time period. This further highlights the importance of personality and
the interviewees’ responses both to the Holocaust and to Palestinians. They had
predominantly addressed this issue of “weakness” for themselves, and accepted this
230 T.W. Adomo, The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Norton & Company, 1950), v. 231 Alan Wolfe, '"the Authoritarian Personality' Revisited,"Chronicle of Higher Education 52, no. 7 (2005): 12-13. 232 Leslie L. Downing and Nanci Russo Monaco, "In-Group/out-Group Bias as a Function of Differential Contact and Authoritarian Personality,"The Journal o f Social Psychology 126, no. 4 (2001): 446.
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“weakness.” Because they accepted it, they did not need to build up defense mechanisms
against it.
I had an interesting conversation with Zameret regarding this. Because of her
area of study, she had thought a lot about the idea of Hitler’s perfect Aryan in comparison
to the Israeli construction of the New Jew. “Out of the fear they’ve tried to build a new
Jew, which is supposed to be strong - it’s like an opposite thing. On one hand we have
all of this fear, and on the other we try to create a new Jew who isn’t afraid of anything,”
Zameret said.233
“But then again he’s always at war,” she said. “You know, it’s very interesting
the image they give to the Holocaust survivor a[s compared] to the Israelis,” she
observed. “They really give feminine characteristics to the Holocaust survivor, and
[portray] Israelis as masculine, they are strong, they have muscles. He will never let
someone do to him what was done to the others.”234
“But what’s the amazing thing,” Zameret continued, “is that the image of the new
Israeli is so out of the Nazi book. He has the blonde hair, the blue eyes!” she exclaimed.
“If you ever get to see the Zionist films of the fifties, it’s amazing. Because if you just
take the subtitles that are in Hebrew and you put them in German, it would look exactly
like the German [propaganda films from WWII].”235
By no coincidence, artists have been the most successful among Jewish-Israeli
dissidents who have tried to address the Holocaust from a different vantage point than
233 Zameret, interview by author. 234 Ibid. 235 Ibid.
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mainstream Israeli society. Frequently, art challenges the basic assumptions of a society,
because art often relates to or stems from affect.
Haim, a well-known artist and another second-generation survivor I interviewed,
was one of the first to deal with the Holocaust through art in Israel. Israeli society
refused to perceive his art’s connection to the Holocaust. “In ‘75, nobody wanted to deal
with it,” Haim told me. “When I did pieces, like to photograph a person naked in a pose
like you are ashamed, which is a pose like a Jew going to her death ... nobody interpreted
it as Holocaust,” he said. “They said, ‘well, it’s a shamed woman,’ or ‘violence against a
woman,’ scenes from normal life. But it was based on Holocaust images.” 236
Haim belonged to Dan Bar-On’s TRT (To Reflect and Trust) dialogue group
comprised of children of Nazi descent, children of Holocaust survivors, and Palestinians.
When I met him, he was working on a joint art exhibition, showing both Jewish and
Palestinian art.
Haim has also dealt extensively with the subject of “Jews going easily to their
deaths” in his artwork. Inspired by his 1983 visit to Poland, Haim later became a
delegate to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the uprising at the Warsaw Ghetto.
When he visited the camps, he realized:
[Hjuman being, human size; [the] gas chamber is [like] an ordinary Israeli shelter. The crematorium is an oven to do bread. Well, they didn’t do bread. But I mean it’s human size, it’s facilities which you know from your life, it’s not hell. Crematorium is a Latin word which is connected to the place where the bad people are burning in hell. It’s not crematorium, it’s an oven. You understand the difference? It’s shifting your conscience about human size which makes it worse, because human beings can do
236 Haim, interview by author, tape recording, Hadera, Israel, 7 February 2006.
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these things, it’s not monsters ... Then, when I came back I built a very big installation in Northern Israel in Tel Hai.237
Israelis represent Tel Hai, one of first places in Israel where Zionists and Palestinians
battled, as an extremely heroic place, where people died for their country. As Haim told
me:
Suddenly people saw this connection. Tel Hai, present; Auschwitz, past - shelter, gas chamber, etc., etc. This unfinished Jewish problem. I wrote a tract that said, “Those who died in Auschwitz were not less brave than you here in the shelter.” I put two kinds of brave. It was not only about being heroic and patriotic, but also to die there was a kind of heroism. It was not normal to say it in 1983 ... there were 40, 000 people going to this installation. And they just followed the instructions, followed the red arrow to go from one place to another. Nobody asked, “Where will it bring me?” And they went down in darkness, it was not easy to breathe, and they still continued to go. And then they went into the shelter. If I was a murderer, I could close the door and put gas. It was exactly the same way. Nobody asked, “Where does he bring us?” I showed by psychological manipulation that I can bring you to the same situation as these Jews in Birkenhau. And we know it was worse there than here. I can tell you that you’re going to see art, but then I could take you and shoot you, and nobody would know about it... 40,000 people went like sheep, one after the other. So it was a message from Auschwitz to these people. It was very shocking. People talked about it in the press and everywhere. And it was the beginning of changing this idea through art.238
I met another artist, Ittai the son of the Holocaust survivor Yona. He was wounded in the
war with Lebanon in the eighties when his tank got hit by a missile. On this same topic
he told me:
Here in Israel we’re raised on the effort of the Jews in the Holocaust to rebel, to support the warrior nation that we are ... from my point of view, the other story, the main part was more heroic than the other one. The people who just tried to live. As an Israeli I had to discover the softness that exists in the Jewish history. Because Israel keeps it in a small cave and hid[es] it from the young people that should go into the army. I found
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it very appealing and attractive because it’s nice. It’s like a flower or a tree or a stone. It’s soft.239
Summary
Those I interviewed showed the following characteristics: heightened sense of
personal responsibility; egalitarian ethics; acceptance of the vulnerability inherent in
being human; as well as the unflinching will power necessary to hold to their personal
standards. These characteristics reflect the environments they grew up in, their
personalities, and the lessons they learned from their parents and grandparents in the
Holocaust which emphasized the importance of equality, justice, and caring for others in
a vulnerable position. With these qualities, they have been able to disrupt the status quo
and challenge authority.
239 Ittai, interview by author, tape recording, Ma’alote, Israel, 8 February 2006.
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CATALYSTS
Thus far, I have considered trends and patterns in the way situational, personal,
and social forces have affected first-, second- and third-generation survivors in their
relationships to the Holocaust and to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I have also showed
empowerment as an important backdrop that allows original survivors the cognitive and
emotive capacity to recognize and address the sufferings of another people. For second-
and third-generation survivors I examined the burdens of the past placed on their
shoulders and the undoing or righting of past wrongs. I have examined the ways
humanist lessons from the Holocaust have been transferred or not transferred to create
empathy with the Palestinians.
If one carefully examines the humanistic response to the Holocaust, one finds that
it serves the same function as the more traditional, security-oriented response. Both
responses honor the deceased and wounded and right the wrongs of the past by redressing
them in the present. At this point I wondered why those I interviewed drew humanistic
conclusions from the Holocaust, and I went on to suggest that this was a result of a strong
internal locus of control, a deep-seated sense of equanimity, and the care-ethics instilled
by family members and enhanced by the interviewees’ ability to empathize with others.
Yet one element has remained unmentioned thus far: a discussion of the catalysts that
128
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caused these individuals to become “activated.” I devoted this chapter to understanding
what this process involved.
A Crisis in Perception
After comparing the motivational processes at work in those I interviewed, I
observed that what influenced each individual to become involved in different peace-
oriented activities was a personal crisis in perception, which ultimately resulted in a
change in their behavior (i.e., actions). This usually happened when the reality presented
to them no longer matched their beliefs. “I think that there is a kind of naivete that we all
want to live in - that there are some things that we Jews wouldn’t do,” Veronika told me.
“And [I] discovered that we Jews are doing [those things]. That is kind of a crisis point.
Your whole collective self-image is then called into question.”240
This underlying process that I observed coincides with the social psychological
theory that Leon Festinger (1957) calls cognitive dissonance. Festinger defines cognitive
dissonance:
Two elements [beliefs and/or behaviors] are in a dissonant relation if, considering these two alone, the obverse of one element would follow from the other. [Cognitive dissonance] is unpleasant, and gives rise to pressures to reduce i t ... cognitive dissonance can be reduced (cognitive consistency restored) through a change of attitudes or beliefs or through a change of behavior.241
Festinger’s theory successfully establishes that not only do beliefs and values dictate
behavior and actions, but that behavior and actions influence the beliefs and values of an
individual.
240 Veronika, interview by author. 241 William D. Crano Marilynn B. Brewer, Social Psychology (San Francisco: West Publishing Company, 1994), 83.
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The theory of cognitive dissonance illuminates a process largely at work in Israeli
society. Erez, an Israeli social psychologist and a refusnik, explained this when I spoke
with him: “There’s a process ... that occurs in Israeli society. It’s called cognitive
dissonance.242 Erez talked about the impact of this phenomenon that he witnessed. He
said,
Humanistic persons who truly believe in peace and conflict resolution go to the territories ... they [believe that they] should be there to prevent wrongs from happening; they [end up] do[ing] everything: they arrest people without warning and without proper cause, they stand in outposts. They have to justify all of their wrong doings ... otherwise they wouldn’t be able to live with themselves.243
I observed that with the interviewees I met, the dissonance created by incidents of
Israeli abuse hit the deepest, most sacred chords of their identities and belief systems.
These experiences usually demanded action. “The only way that I could justify living
here to myself was to say, ‘Okay, I’m here to oppose these things, not to be a part of
these things,”’ Veronika said. Veronika experienced a personal crisis after “reading
about a detention camp that they called Ansak I, II, and III. I remember reading about the
prisoners being asked to sit naked on broken glass. That was one of the things that
actually broke me. The people who were being tortured were allegedly ‘security’
prisoners. This was before the first Intifada,” she said.244
The interviewees experienced overall a similar process in becoming politically or
socially active. This usually involved, first, disillusionment with the in-group, coinciding
with the realization, second, that even their people could commit acts of great atrocity,
and then, third, action. Beate did not become an activist until age 40. She became an
242 Erez, interview by author, tape recording, Haifa, Israel, 5 February 2006. 243 Ibid. 244 Veronika, interview by author.
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activist in response to the 1982 war with Lebanon. “The Lebanon war was such a
negative shock that it woke me up,” she said. “From the first day of the Lebanon war, it
was such a shock that there was in no way that you could believe what happened ... [in]
’82 it was crystal clear that Israel was the aggressor. That was such a shock.”245
Ronit had such an experience while participating in a group trip to Germany to
visit Dachau at the age of seventeen.246 Her group met with German students their age,
who visited Dachau with them. Leading up to the event, they had just been young adults
together having a fun time, socializing, and going out dancing. But when it came time to
visit Dachau, Ronit told me that the Israelis had great difficulty going with the German
students. She said:
We wanted to blame them, but we understood. “Why do we have to blame them? They’re seventeen as we are.” We wanted to blame someone ... We came back and we asked them if they can explain what happened to their people. How did they come to be like this? Then, one took a pamphlet of children who had bums from napalm and said, “These children are Palestinians burned from Israeli bombs.” Then we said, “We’re not using these kinds of weapons.” [And we were wondering], where did they find this? This is not possible! For me it was such a shock, you know? We ’re the good ones. Especially in Dachau. We were the good ones, right? So now what? I couldn’t speak for I guess a few days. I couldn’t open my mouth. I didn’t know. And then I came back, and I had to read all [of] what I could find about the Israeli army.247
Adam could also pinpoint a specific incident that profoundly influenced him
when he was in high school. He said:
There was a sort of a group of left-wing young people, which wasn’t 100 percent serious, it was a bit like Boy Scouts, but it was well organized. There was a boy two years older than me that was the leader of the group, and one day he told us, ‘There is tonight something very important, I can’t tell you what it is, but you must not miss it because you will regret it all
245 Beate, interview by author. 246 Ronit, interview by author. 247 Ibid.
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your life if you miss it.’ ... It was adventurous and exciting, waiting for something unknown, and we did not know what to expect. And then there was a soldier in uniform. I think he was 19 years old. To us, he looked very grown up and glamorous. He had come back from the Gaza Strip, where Sharon was breaking up at that time which was in fact the first Intifada. It was the first big rebellion of Palestinians against the Israeli wall which was at that time only confined to the Gaza strip. This soldier told us that soldiers were stopping [Palestinians] in the middle of the street and beating them up without reason, and there were executions without trials, and torture of prisoners and all kinds of things. Now I do not like to hear such things, but I am not very surprised to hear it. But then it was only two or three years after the Six Day War, and then we said, ‘But, that’s not true! Our army does not behave like this.’ And then the soldier said, ‘Yes, it is true, I saw it with my own eyes, I participated in it and now I cannot sleep at night because I participated in it.’248
I wondered why these individuals chose to modify their actions, and not their beliefs or
perception of the situation. Consider the following conversation that Zameret had with
her grandmother, as an alternative possible response:
They heard this rumor that there were empty houses here in Haifa. So they sent the brother to run ahead and catch a room. And of course the empty houses were the houses of the Arabs that were deported from here. I told [my grandmother] that these [houses] belonged to people who were deported from here so that you could come and stay here in this house. And she said, ‘No, no.’ And then I said, ‘This is exactly what the Germans did to you.’ And she said, ‘No, no. It’s not the same, it’s not the same.’ And she never wanted to speak about it again. People here just don’t do the connection here. They just don’t do it.249
As Erez pointed out, avoiding such connections causes a lot of pain.250 But certainly
those I interviewed, who did make these connections, felt no less pain than others. What
enabled them to make these connections and to stand up against abusive behaviors when
others could not? The answer goes to the heart of this matter; they were able to accept
that they too were capable of destructive behaviors. From the ability to realize and accept
248 Adam, interview by author. 249 Zameret, interview by author. 250 Erez, interview by author.
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this, it would have been more painful for these dissidents to ignore, or justify the abusive
aspects of Israeli policy and action. To do so would not only have forced them to go
against their values and beliefs, it would have assaulted their core sensibilities. “I
consider myself first as a human being and a civilian, and then as a paratrooper. My
humanistic values took precedence,” Erez said, telling me why he started refusing to
serve. He said:
We are more than about 1,200 refusniks - about 600 are from fighting units, who have refused to serve in the territories ... it has made a major impact on Israeli society because we are not fanatics, we are mainstream Israeli young men and adults who think that what is happening is wrong ... So because security and the IDF is such a big deal in Israel, when so many fighting men refuse, it’s a major thing.251
For others, this personal crisis occurred when the perceived film separating “us”
and “them” wore too thin. “The first Intifada caught the army unprepared,” Dan told me.
Dan headed his commando unit. “No one was trained ... [for it] ... We are trained for
survival wars, not for throwing stones.”252 The army did not know what was happening,
he said, or why the Palestinians were rioting in the first place.
This especially wore on the men because, he said, “We were chasing kids that
were the age of our kids ... The kids were age 6 to 18. And actually in one incident, I
saw a mother carrying a kid running toward a soldier for some reason - 1 think [the child]
was wounded or something. I was tired, and I was sure she was holding my kid.
Everything blurred, and for a second [I thought the child was mine].”253
Later, one of Dan’s most experienced soldiers came to him, and told him that he
no longer wanted to fight, and begged to be made the cook for the unit. He told Dan,
251 Erez, interview by author. 252 Dan, interview by author. 253 Ibid.
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“Something is wrong.” Later, the new cook started an encounter group for kids which
Dan participated in organizing and attending. He did so at a potentially high cost: the
Shabak (Israeli equivalent of the FBI) did not take such fraternizing with “terrorists”
lightly.
As a young adult, Hava joined Haganah. She had seen plenty of terrible things,
but she always thought to herself back then, “It is a war. In war, [unfortunate things
happen].” She explained:
In ‘48, most of the Palestinians were thrown out; and not in a very delicate way. Usually, when the Israeli army entered a village or any place, they simply killed several people, so the rest will run away ... I was in Akko three days after the conquest. On the first day that we entered Akko, I entered a flat. And there was coffee on the table, and pita on the table. They probably ran away in the middle of breakfast. We looked around, and there was a pair of shoes. Shoes of a two-year-old, or something like this, and I got a shock. I had seen worse things, but this, the baby needs his shoes! Probably they tried to put it on, and they didn’t have time, so they left the shoes and they ran without shoes. I started shouting and making trouble. ‘We must find the baby and give him his shoes! ’ They laughed at me, and they said, ‘Are you crazy? How will we know where they went?’254
With the first Intifada, it became apparent to Hava that the situation for the Palestinians
could not be tolerated, and she felt compelled to help. Hava said, “One day, there was
some meeting of a group of feminists. I’m not a very urgent feminist....I generally like
men and don’t think that they are less pleasant than women. But that’s another thing.
Anyway, so I came across this group of women from Jerusalem.”255 One of the women
in the group had just been released from prison where she had shared a cell with a
Palestinian woman who was eight months pregnant. The pregnant woman had not been
254 Hava, interview by author. 255 Ibid.
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charged with anything, but the police tried to force her husband, an alleged terrorist, to
confess, by keeping her in prison. They demolished their house, and their children had to
live with other relatives.
“At this point, her husband said, ‘All right. I’ll confess to anything that they
want,’” Hava said. “If they want him to sign that he killed Rabin, or anybody, all right.
The only thing that he demanded was that they release his wife.”256
As Hava put it, the Israelis “tried to have their cake and eat it too.” They agreed
to release the man’s wife, but only if she paid $3,000. “She could just as well [offer to
pay] $100,000 or $1 million, because she didn’t have anything!” Hava said.
In prison, the Israelis also tried to cause the woman to miscarry. “They tried to
make her abort her baby,” Hava recalled. “They put her face-down on the floor of an
open jeep, put their legs on her back, and then drove with her lying on her stomach. She
was a very strong woman and she didn’t abort,” Hava said. “They tried not to call the
doctor when she started to give birth. But the women who were with her in prison started
shouting and making trouble, and the police brought the doctor.” 257
Hava and her friends tackled the problem of her release with fervor. “We started
all around the town, asking people for money. One person to this day won’t talk to me
because of this!”258
In one week, the women had managed to collect $3000 by asking everyone that
they knew for money. At the end of the week, the money was paid and the woman went
home with her baby. But this woman’s troubles had not ended. Her home had been
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demolished, and Israelis came and burnt down the tent that the Red Cross had provided
for her. Hava told me that the Red Cross gave her a second tent, and it was also burned
down. She eventually went to live with her family. She had three children, the oldest of
which was 5. The women helped provide funding so that a house could be bought for her
in the Gaza Strip. They also helped the woman take midwifery courses so that she had a
way to feed her family. Her husband received a sentence of 400 years in prison, which
Hava called “idiotic.”
With this first case, their organization was bom. The organization provides legal
assistance, and provides for some basic needs while the women are held in prison. They
have had a fair amount of success in obtaining the release of many of the women.259
The human cost of war, for Meir, meant the suffering and devastation that war
0ftC\ brought. When Meir first immigrated to Israel from Argentina, he was extremely right
wing. Over the years in response to different experiences, his political views changed
and now he identifies most closely with a non-Zionist left-wing movement.
I asked Meir where this change had come from. “It started when I was wounded
in the Yom Kippur war in ‘73,” he said. “I was hospitalized for a very long period of
time, and that gave me a lot of time to think things through. I didn’t have a family at the
time, so I had the time to observe a lot of things around me, and observed a lot of widows
and orphans, and I began to realize that something was very wrong. It was not a sudden
experience,” he noted. “It took me two years to make a decision. The movement that
I’ve become a part of in the left has become more and more extreme as a reflection of the
259 Hava, interview by author. 260 Meir, interview by author.
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conflict itself, and how it has become more and more radical - more extreme.”261
Another salient finding emerged: The interviewees identified with others on a
profoundly human level before relating on an ethnic or national level. The religious of
the interviewees allowed their religious beliefs to work as a vehicle for affirming human
dignity and value, as opposed to reinforcing ethnocentric and hierarchical ways of
relating to others. Only two individuals I interviewed were religious: Veronika an
Orthodox Jew, and Stella a devout Christian. One of the core lessons of the Holocaust
remained that anybody could become like a Nazi. As Erez said,
The dehumanization process is rapid. It happened there [in Nazi Germany] very quickly, and many people who considered themselves normative, even moralistic persons - in both [Germany and Israel] - it got to a point where they saw others - members of other groups - as non persons. When you see a woman in labor at an outpost, you hold her there for about three or four hours, and she loses her baby and you don’t even have regret about it, it’s— you’re emotionally defective.262
Ultimately, no one can claim complete immunity to this situation, and this places much
importance on action, doing something about it. Even inaction becomes a form of
enabling. The humane tradition is one that must be carefully cultivated and as carefully
guarded. Erez observed, “You have to be suspicious, to criticize reality, to do what you
believe in and not exactly what the established authority tells you to do. You have to
respect and nourish culture, and humanistic ideas, and art.”263 said Erez. He voiced
concern that the humanities as a field do not receive enough attention in Israel. He
stated:
Humanistic education doesn’t get enough attention in Israel. The proof is that a few faculties were shut down in Tel Aviv University, only in
261 Ibid. 262 Erez, interview by author. 263 Ibid.
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humanistic areas; in literature, and philosophy. It means something about Israeli culture. The Israeli budget or the university budget reflects what you think is important... You invest in what you think is important. If you think economics is important, fine. If you think law is important, fine, but if you think that humanities is not that important, then I think you have a major problem.264
Many people I spoke with showed concern about another major problem: the way
schools teach the Holocaust. “I was five and in kindergarten when the teacher started
talking about the Holocaust,” Miki told me. “And I remember already knowing that there
was a really bad man named Hitler who killed all of my family, and I was, like, the
genius of kindergarten.”
Veronika said, “My daughter and I were both terribly upset at the way - my
grandson is seven - how in school they’re [already] starting to talk about all of the
specific horrors [of the Holocaust].” She continued, “This is not how we wanted him to
relate to it. And that night... he was telling his sister who’s three [about what he learned
in school]. And he said, ‘Did you know that Hitler killed 6 million Jews?’ And she said,
‘He killed 6 million Jews?’ And he must have felt sorry for her, and said, ‘No, no, no.
He didn’t kill them, he was just really nasty to them.’”266
“I think all of us have a story like this,” Zameret told me on the same topic.
“When my cousin was four or five, she came from the kindergarten - it was Holocaust
Day. Her mom wanted to go to the grocery [store], and she told her mother, ‘No, no,
don’t go! Maybe the Germans will come and take me.’” Of\l
265 Miki, interview by author. 266 Veronika, interview by author. 267 Zameret, interview by author.
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Summary
In this chapter, I have described the way a crisis in perception, producing
cognitive dissonance, was often a catalyzing experience for the interviewees, which
pushed them into action for peace and justice.
I have also portrayed another crisis in perception, the failure of Jewish-Israeli
society to promote humane values and its opposite attempt, through the educational
system, to inculcate and prolong the worst, most hostile aspects of the Holocaust legacy.
I have described the problems with adopting, teaching, and transmitting a paranoid,
security-oriented response to the Holocaust.
The Holocaust was a crisis in human rights. While securing people’s physical
safety undeniably matters, securing humanity and humanness also matters and proves
much more difficult to guard. But doing so may be the only thing that stands between
people and a Hobbesian jungle, Nazi Germany, and Deir Yassin.
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CONCLUSION: A HUMAN-CENTERED APPROACH
Transforming Conflicts
This study joins other human-centered approaches in recognizing the importance
of going to the roots of a conflict to address the underlying issues that sustain it. I have
concluded that lasting peace processes cannot be implemented without serious
consideration of the social, psychological, and cultural aspects. These aspects must be
evaluated in conjunction with factors traditionally studied: economic, political, and
security concerns. Scholars such as Boulding, Galtung, and Lederach 0*7 f\ insist that
security and peace can neither be obtained nor sustained through militaristic ventures and
power paradigmatic approaches alone. They conclude that conflicts can only be
transformed by addressing basic human needs and by addressing structural forms of
violence. Like these scholars, I challenge the underlying premises of those whose vision
of peace is the absence of violence, to be achieved by means of arms deterrence.
The approach called “conflict transformation” functions from the premise that
conflict is a natural and important aspect of human relations and that conflicts are not
necessarily the result of rational or strategic choices. This approach recognizes that
268 E. Boulding,Cultures of Peace: The Hidden Side of History (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000 ). 269 J. Galtung,Peace by Peaceful Means (London: Sage Publications Ltd, 1996). 270 J.P. Lederach,Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace, 1997). 140
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conflicts frequently result from denial or obstruction of basic human needs,
psychological, social, and physical, and that these basic needs include justice and
freedom. When the needs for justice and freedom are not met, violent conflict can result.
My findings add to the evidence and support for addressing conflicts using transformative
approaches.
Basing my analyses on psychosocial and psychoanalytical theories, I have
developed and supported the assertion that Israeli society has yet to fully reconcile with
the ghosts of its Holocaust past. The continuously transmitted trauma of the Holocaust
has left Israel defensive, hostile, and paranoid. This significantly impacts the way Israel
and Israelis perceive and relate to others. This tightly held and defended chosen trauma
greatly exacerbates the intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Those holding a paranoid worldview tend to engage in “irrational possibilistic
thought rather than realistic or probabilistic thought”.271 In the making of policy, this
paranoid view frequently leads to preemptive attacks and strikes on others. The most
recent attacks on Lebanon by Israel, as a response to the capture of two Israeli soldiers by
Hezbollah guerillas on a cross border raid, demonstrative this. Such reactions are
consistent with the paranoid image of the world as hostile, and with a paranoid need to
see oneself as defending against the potential aggression of others.272
The most notable problem about this recent war was Israel’s disproportionate
response, and the loss of life in both Israel and Lebanon. UN Secretary General Kofi
Annan stated, “While Hezbollah’s actions are deplorable, and as I’ve said, Israel has a
271 Weaver, ed., Culture, Communication and Conflict,388. 272 Ibid.,389.
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right to defend itself, the excessive use of force is to be condemned,”273 The number of
Lebanese killed was particularly astounding. Amnesty International calculated that by
the end of the war, there were 1,183 Lebanese fatalities. A third of these fatalities were
children under the age of 12. An additional 4,054 Lebanese were injured during the
7,000 air bombardments and the 2,500 attacks from the Israeli Navy.274
I have discussed how chosen traumas, most notably, the Holocaust, are
transmitted, and I have discussed the long-term social costs suffered by all involved when
traumas are transmitted without interruption to succeeding generations, as the most recent
war with Lebanon illustrates.
While conducting my research, I was very interested to learn that some of the
people closest to the actual experience of the Holocaust, and certainly the most directly
affected by it, do not identify with traditional Israeli views of the Holocaust and the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The findings from the interviews I conducted can be
summarized as follows:
One conclusion is that suffering doesn’t make people better; it usually damages
them further and impairs their ability to relate to others in a healthy way. This is seen in
the way the Holocaust has influenced Israeli society. In my interview results, I also saw
this in the way original survivors related to the Holocaust and to Palestinians, based on
their experiences during the Holocaust.
273 BBC, Annan Demands Lebanon Ceasefire^BBC, July 20, 2006, accessed 2006); available from http://news.bbc.co.Uk/2/hi/middle_east/5199088. stm. 274 Amnesty International,Israel/Lebanon Deliberate Destruction or "Collateral Damage"? Israeli Attacks on Civilian Infrastructure(Amnesty International, 2006, accessed 2006); available from http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE 180072006.
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Another conclusion is that people learn how to relate to and internalize chosen
traumas like the Holocaust, and other traumatic events, such as the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. The children and grandchildren of survivors usually receive the transmission
from parents and grandparents. Their personalities affect the way they relate to these
transmissions. Increasingly, however, it seems that the influence of the Israeli
educational system is beginning to trump the influence of parents who have drawn
humanist lessons from the Holocaust.
A third conclusion is the great importance of empathy. The individuals whom I
interviewed showed a great capacity to empathize with others they did not agree with.
This ability seemed to influence the way they related to the Holocaust and the way they
drew humanist lessons from the Holocaust. I found that ethnocentric conclusions drawn
from the Holocaust contribute to greater paranoia, fear, and dissociation from the self and
others, whereas the humanist response can bring about the ability to heal. The humanist
response is a powerful way of “undoing” the past; that facilitates the reintegration of the
self, of affect, thought, and behavior. It restores human relationships by honoring the
basic needs of others, creating a positive self-fulfilling prophesy that empowers people
and facilitates the development of caring relationships.
Implication of These Findings for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Violence, hatred, and fear perpetuate violence, hatred, and fear. In conflict, this
deadly relationship strengthens with each negative encounter. Thus Israelis must
earnestly re-evaluate their relation and responses to Palestinians, even if only for their
own welfare.
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Palestinians have also experienced and continue to experience great loss and
helplessness on both physical and psychological levels. The physical reality is a harsh
one for the majority of Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories, and has taken the
lives and livelihoods of many, wrecking havoc on the family unit. Basic psychological
needs are frustrated with little promised relief. Self determination is a luxury that
remains saliently absent. Most are willing to settle for obtaining food for that day.
Others take their own lives, which from one vantage point can be seen as an
extemalization of the asphyxiated life they live every day, and ironically, the ultimate
form of self-determination: deciding how and when one will perish, as well as reversing
the power dynamic, and making others completing helpless in one horrible last stand.
From the psychoanalytic perspective on this state of desperation and helplessness, Karkar
writes:
As in the individual who seeks to alter such an unbearable self state through acts as extreme as suicide or homicide, the group’s need for undoing the damage to the collective self by whatever means, and a deeply anchored, unrelenting compulsion in the pursuit of this aim give it no rest.275
Trauma, violence, and war act like viruses: when transferred to others they can mutate,
becoming more virulent and dangerous to the host organism in turn as well as to the
people exposed. As this metaphor suggests, a series of inoculations needs to be given to
the socializing forces that promulgate this.
It is helpful in several ways to understand the impetus behind the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict by using the construct “chosen trauma.” This approach humanizes the
conflict further, showing that the frustration of basic human needs and rights is at the root
275 Kakar, The Colours o f Violence,217.
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of the problem on both sides. This human-centered approach establishes a key to
resolving the conflict on a practical level. However, dealing with deep seated animosity
and resentment in the hearts and minds of Israelis and Palestinians would prove difficult.
Because one is dealing with two collectives, it is difficult to contain shared social traumas
and to address them. “Nations, properly speaking, cannot be reconciled to other nations
as individuals can be to individuals,” notes Ignatieff. “Nonetheless, individuals are
helped to heal and to reconcile by public rituals of atonement.” 276
I recommend promotion of empathy as a key to resolving deep seated feelings of
animosity on both sides. Once conscious grievances have been dealt with or settled with
both parties, politicians, religious figureheads, education systems, and the media can put
their minds and wills to encouraging a way of seeing and relating to one another that
utilizes empathy. Of course it would be challenging to get individuals to a point where
they would be willing to see the “enemy-other” empathically, especially with so many
resistances built up against it. But this is a promising project, worth doing. Empathy
elicits a powerful way of relating to one another on a fundamentally human and humane
level.
Preserving the Humane Tradition through Education
'yn n There is a humane Jewish tradition , and I urge that it may best be preserved and
promulgated through the Jewish-Israeli educational systems. Jewish schools need to
carefully reconsider both how they are teaching children to relate to the Holocaust, and
276 Ignatieff, The Warrior's Honor, 186. 277 Ellis, Out of the Ashes.
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when they begin teaching them about it. Some interviewees spoke extensively with me
about this issue. They said it is clear to them that the way the education system teaches
the Holocaust is re-traumatizing generation after generation, putting upon them burdens
they do not need to carry, including humiliation over the perceived “weakness” of their
people, anger, fear, and hatred, which can lead to ethnocentric ways of relating to others.
Common sense dictates that children should not be learning about the Holocaust when
they are too young to understand past versus present. As my interviewees pointed out,
there is enough conflict in Israel already, without children having to worry that the
Germans are going to get them while their mother is out grocery shopping.
Looking to the Future
These findings affirm those of other scholars regarding the long-term impact of
chosen traumas on groups of people. However, research into ways that outsiders can
work with insiders of a society remains to be done. An understanding of this would
facilitate the process of putting the past to rest. One might develop ways of relating to
such traumas that emphasize the humane tradition according to current culture, time, and
situation. In Israel, one might begin with the elementary and high schools. Before this
interventional, reform work could be done, one would need to learn about and deal with
the institutions and individuals invested in the preservation of the Holocaust as a chosen
trauma.
As discussed previously, chosen traumas become integral parts of the self-system,
of someone’s identity. Having an enemy provides satisfaction and group cohesion.
Enemy imagery develops out of the need for a sense of belonging and the need to
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simplify a complex reality: this especially comforts one in times of uncertainty and fear.
During times of conflict, national image frequently becomes more salient because of the
ego support that “in-group” membership provides. Delineations between “us” and
“them” become distinct as ambiguities disappear, due to the need to assert a good-versus-
evil message to justify one’s aggression. One’s group portrays their aggression as a
largely defensive effort while designating the aggression of the other party as offensive.
Such dualistic simplifications clearly operate in Israel’s construction of national self.278
Modifying such a relationship would likely threaten the people, to speak nothing of the
political forces that benefit from the process of remembering and perpetuating trauma. In
Israel, this is the military. Yet one must determine how to work with such institutions as
part of working with and through chosen traumas on all levels of a society.
Knowing the deep motivations and needs that lead societies to cling to their
chosen traumas, we are tempted to shy away from the challenge to influence and change
them. However, we can take much courage from the examples of the remarkable people
who are working within Jewish-Israeli society to promote a humanist relationship to the
Holocaust and empathy with the Palestinians. They vary in amount of education, in
personal resources, in age and health status, and in talents and skills, but they all tackle
the great work of peace with determination and courage. And so must we, in all the
different social conflicts where we have a chance to make a difference.
278 Weaver, ed.,Culture, Communication and Conflict,389.
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