 |
|
Home in rubble of previous home
|
The
psychology of the oppressor and oppressed is a complex relationship spanning
centuries of conflict around the world. In the Palestinian-Israeli conflict this
psychological web is displayed in many ways. For the Israelis, some experts
wonder if memories of an earlier holocaust are factors in the current conflict.
Other experts point out that the psychological torture and manipulation employed
by the Israeli government on its own people, as well as the Palestinians is even
more harmful than guns that have been fired on the West Bank. Recent studies
have shown that the psychological effects of war and conflict are more damaging
and longer lasting to the society than casualties of war.
Many
experts believe that Germany was the final blow to Ashkenazi Jews and inflicted
a permanent wound. Unable to avenge their oppressors, they focused their
energies elsewhere and through the United League were able to create and then
obtain their dream of a homeland. Holding onto a false notion of nationality,
patterns of behavior developed until some people were able to intellectualize
everything and it reached the point of becoming obsessively competitive. Over a
period of time for some, this has become ingrained into the psyche. Some
Israelis even openly admit to massacres of the Palestinian people as if it were
a common occurrence. Minister of Defense Benjamin ben Eliezar told the Israeli
journal Ediot Ahronot, “It is a fact that we have killed Palestinians
in Jenin, Qabatiyeh and Tammun with the world remaining absolutely silent.
It’s a disaster for Arafat” (Amnesty #1, p.1).
For
other Israelis, however, it is the psychological manipulation of their
government that keeps them fighting and not their own convictions. To prevent
resistance among Israeli youth, Israeli soldiers and reservists are imprisoned
for refusing to perform military duties in the Occupied Territories. In
September 2001, 62 Israeli students approaching the age of conscription stated,
“We strongly resist Israel’s pounding of human rights, land expropriation,
arrests, executions without trial, house demolition, closure, torture and the
prevention of healthcare are only some of the crimes the state of Israel
carries-out, in blunt violation international conventions it has ratified.”
They were subsequently arrested and humiliated in front of their peers. In a
letter dated this January, 460 reservists stated, “We shall not fight beyond
the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire
people” (Amnesty #2, p.2). Many people signing this letter were either
imprisoned or mistreated in some way.
Other
Israelis have been called to public humiliation and psychological trauma for
their part in exposing Israeli massacres of the past. Ilan Pappe, Israeli
professor of political science at Haifa University along with other revisionist
historians have been dedicated to unearthing Israel’s true past of 1948’s
ethnic cleansing. Pappe criticized Haifa’s University conduct over the Teddy
Katz case – an MA student who was expelled last year for unearthing evidence
of massacres committed by Israeli forces in the coastal village of Tantura in
1948. For this activity, Ilan Pappe was called-up for trial by the Dean of
Humanities using the Israeli courts legal authority to do so (Sakr, p.1, 2).
However,
the Israeli government applies even more intense psychological manipulation to
the Palestinian people. Muhammad al-Naqari, an expert in “akhlaq”
(ethics), calls this diffidence. Diffidence, explains Muhammad al-Naraqi “is
when one fails to reach the heights of perfection…being content with the lower
rudimentary attainments (al-Naraqi, p.51). Diffidence is what heads of state
have succumbed to, killing the human soul, which seems unable to rise to the
growing injustices. “…Well I grant for you your Ummah that it would not
be dominated by an enemy who would not take their lives and destroy them root
and branch, even if all the people from the different parts of the world join
hands together, but it would be from amongst them, your Ummah, that some people
would kill the other or imprison the other” (Muslim, 041, #6932).
|
|
The way a captive is killed can be a message |
Certainly,
in modern Palestine it seems there are more dead souls than dead bodies. Fear,
in fact, prevails over death in Palestine today. Many people contemplate recent
events but even more people contemplate the future. “Maybe by this time next
year there will be no Palestinians on the West Bank,” says one West Bank
resident. “You might be watching T.V and seeing what everybody else is seeing.
The two main scenes on the screen are either our children who are full of life,
anger and blood or the politicians who are defending their political purposes
and preparing for the coming season. I feel so angry when I watch those flowers,
our children. We carried them in our wombs; we fed them with our blood and
tears. We laughed with them, at them and for them. We built our small houses,
dreaming that they would be made bigger by their laughter and noise. We dreamt
that our children would look after us in our old age, knowing that there would
be no welfare state to ensure our well-being” (Alexander p.1, 2).
Muhammad
Nassar is another victim of the psychology of the oppressed. He watched his
whole family disintegrate. “Do you know what it means for a person to
suffocate, to drown and not be able to scream,” he says, “…that is
me. I have been out of work for five months. I cannot even put food on the table
for my family. My wife’s death at the checkpoint has only made things worse.
Who will take care of the children? I don’t even know why they allow us to
live. Are we supposed to stand-by with our hands tied while our loved ones are
killed? Our children made homeless and our dignity and humanity stripped from
us?” (Wahdan, p.2).
|
|
Wrestling a captive to the ground |
Psychological
torture is also common among prisoners taken by Israeli troops. Su’ad Ghazal
was arrested at 15 for allegedly killing an illegal Israeli settler. After two
years of imprisonment she cried out, “…but it is not just international law
that has been violated. It is not just my body that bears the scars of the
cruelest kind of physical torture or my mind that has been traumatically changed
because of brutal psychological torture, but the fact that any person could be
as cruel as to try to take away the child in me - to destroy me as a human
being, to insult me, to try to take away my dignity and to erase my identity
forever, in violation of all that is decent and right”. From the first day of
her detention she was told: “Now you are all alone and no one can help
you…We will make you regret the day you were born” (Yaghi, p.1, 2).
Despite
harsh treatment by the Israeli government, Muslims in the West Bank say that
they rely on Islam to help them through their difficulties. “Islam is our
rudder in the ocean of madness, “ says Samia Nassar. “If they take this away
the individual who is not anchored in God can offer no resistance on his own
resources to the physical and moral blandishments of the world” (Jung, p.24).
Just
as there are some Europeans who believe that the holocaust never took place many
now declare the same for Jenin. However, for those Palestinians still alive in
Jenin and other endangered cities in the West Bank, it is a matter of hiding in
fear, the fear of sleep, mental distress, children urinating in fear, screaming,
fevers, nightmares, constant headaches, unable to eat, uncontrollable diabetes
and disruption in bodily functions (Giacaman, p.2).
Sources:
