Re-enacting their trauma on the world
Image Olesha 15377505
For weeks now, hundreds of young Israelis have blocked aid trucks from going to Gaza. Mothers of Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldiers are demanding President Biden deny humanitarian aid. In video interviews with the protestors, they say things like ‘Hamas makes flour and sugar into bombs,’ or ‘Those children would grow up to be terrorists.’ They wholeheartedly support starving and bombing children.
Some Jews feel those things because they are traumatized, and their government reinforces their trauma from childhood. Israelis are constantly reminded of the Nazi holocaust and told that Palestinians want to repeat it. Journalist Max Blumenthal played an Israeli TV ad accusing people who question Israeli October 7 narratives — such as babies beheaded, hung on clotheslines, or baked in an oven — of Holocaust denial.
In video clips seen by most Israelis, these horrors are tearfully related by men in IDF uniforms who claim to have witnessed them. Blumenthal then played clips of leaders of the communities involved clearly stating the crimes never happened.
A complete list of Israeli victims on and after October 7 is maintained on the web site of Ha’aretz, a leading Israeli paper, and lists only two children under five among the dead. No beheaded or baked babies. But millions of Israelis and their Jewish supporters in the West believe these elaborate and emotionally-laden stories and are traumatized and triggered by them
Then these young people are sent to occupy Gaza, where they see everyone as a deadly enemy. So they happily blow up houses and shoot children, assassinate health care workers and journalists and post videos of their crimes on TikTok and Telegram. When they come home, Israelis call them heroes.
One trauma-triggering ad showed two girls watching video on which a man stated that the beheaded babies story was false. The girls were upset; one saying, ”But I saw it.” They couldn’t have seen it; since no such videos exist, but they had seen reports of it.
An older actor, portraying their grandfather, showed them his forearm with numbers tattooed on it, like in a concentration camp. The whole ad is designed to call up fear and anger in Israelis, equating Palestinian militancy with the Nazi Holocaust.
Racialized trauma
These extreme propaganda campaigns wouldn’t resonate with Jews if they weren’t traumatized already. In his book, My Grandmother’s Hands, psychologist Resmaa Menakem calls this condition “racialized trauma,” and it besets groups that have been oppressed or brutalized. He focuses on African-Americans but says, “If you’re Jewish, you are living with this.”
Not only the Holocaust, but centuries of race riots called pogroms targeted European (Ashkenazi) Jews, who periodically had to flee their homes. Menakem says that, like colonized people and descendants of slaves, Jews carry these memories in their bodies.
Menakem writes that observing trauma, hearing about it, or inflicting it on others is also traumatic. He has observed this “vicarious trauma” in police officers. Police see terrible things and inflict traumas on others as part of their work. Over years, they tend to become desensitized to others’ suffering and to dehumanize civilians.
Israeli Jews live in a traumatizing society. They are inflicting most of the trauma, but enough counter-attacks happen to keep them frightened and angry. That’s how you get people believing sacks of sugar will be made into bombs, or that five year old children threaten their lives.
Neurologists say that traumatized people aren’t thinking straight. Those who become abusers aren’t acting from reason — they’re reflexively lashing out to protect themselves from a perceived threat. They have to dehumanize the targets of their abuse to justify their behavior.
Trauma leads to narcissism
Seeking safety, traumatized individuals often become self-obsessed, a personality trait called narcissism. Counselor Heather Hayes writes, ”Narcissistic behavior revolves around a grandiose self-image and a belief in their uniqueness and superiority.”
Can trauma make a whole people narcissistic? I think it can. Abusers like the German Nazis called themselves the Master Race, the Jews are the Chosen People, and Americans have a ‘Manifest Destiny’ to conquer a continent and never stopped.
A narcissistic person or society can’t consider the needs of others. How far is that from dehumanizing whole peoples? Dehumanizing Palestinians is reflected in the words Israeli leaders use to talk about them. Major General Ghassan Alian told Gaza, “Animal Humans will be treated accordingly. You wanted hell and you’ll get hell”
Knesset member Ayelet Shaked said of Palestinian mothers, “They should go. Otherwise, they will raise more little snakes there.” Former MK Michael Ben-Ari said, “There are no innocents in Gaza. Mow them down … Kill the Gazans without thought or mercy.” IDF soldiers in Gaza post videos calling Gazans “roaches” and “rats,” language the Nazis used to talk about Jews.
One way traumatized people cope is by identifying with their abusers. That’s what Zionists have done since the 19th Century — proposing to the imperial powers: ‘Get us a homeland and we’ll get out of your way and be your outpost in Asia.’ They allied first with the UK and then with the US and have served imperial interests ever since.
A history of trauma doesn’t mean Israel, the US, or the IDF should be forgiven for their crimes. The point is to stop them. When people are acting with psychotic levels of cruelty, immorality, and stupidity, we need to understand why they’re doing it.
Palestinians even more traumatized
I doubt any group in modern history has endured so much trauma over so long a time as the Palestinians. They have been dispossessed, treated as inferiors, jailed and harassed for 75 years and are being massacred in the current moment (Feb 2, 2024.) Millions are growing up impoverished and traumatized, and a lot of them join resistance groups like Hamas as a way to cope.
What choice do they have? For many, living a life of unending violence and daily humiliation by army, police, and settlers, the alternative would be insanity or suicide.
Healing from racialized trauma
Two racially traumatized groups are fighting each other. One has the backing of US and European imperialism. To stop the war, both groups would have to heal. It sounds impossible, even ridiculous to imagine at this moment, but if people realized they had no choice, perhaps they could reconcile, as South Africa did after apartheid ended.
Traumatized societies have healed before. In Liberia, 15 years of civil war pitted tribe against tribe, Muslims against Christians. Horrible crimes were committed by all sides, as bad as anything seen in Palestine before the current genocide. Peace seemed impossible. But a group of women came together across tribal and religious lines, called themselves Liberian Women Mass Movement for Peace, and took years of creative direct action, including sex strikes, to force their men to make peace.
Image: Standing Together
Despite all the past and present trauma, peace could come to Palestine. Groups are coming together to try. A Jewish and Palestinian group called Standing Together describes itself this way: “We are building a shared home for all those who refuse hatred and choose empathy.”
Standing Together hold antiwar rallies carrying signs in English, Arabic, and Hebrew. They face attacks and arrest from the government, hate from Jews for opposing the war, and criticism from Palestinians for focusing on subjective factors like interpersonal hate and not on systemic oppression.
The article you are reading could face the same criticism. What good will it do to heal trauma when Zionists, imperialists, religious extremists, and the military-industrial complex keep creating more?
But things changed in Liberia. They could change in the Holy Land. I ask everyone: please keep raising your voice for peace. A million lives are at stake in Gaza. Ceasefire now! For a free, multi-ethnic Palestine!
Published in An Injustice
#The_UN_Goals #humanrights #apart #nvaction
