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What the
Stabbings in Israel Reveal about Palestinian Society
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One suggestion is that Palestinian culture has been overtaken
by psychosis. But what is the underlying cause of this flight to
unreality? Part of the answer is sadomasochism.
All cultures have a touch of sadism. Political
success requires defeating and humiliating enemies in battle, if only
occasionally. Individuals capable of or prone to committing terrible pain
upon others are found everywhere. And all societies endorse a degree of
institutional sadism—police, prisons, military—as part of their monopoly on
violence. But for most, pain is only a means to an end, political success and
cultural survival, which are the true pleasures.
But inflicting pain and rejoicing in suffering are so
visible within Palestinian culture that they can be construed as defining
traits. Israelis being murdered, kidnapped, or even just rocketed are causes
to hand out sweets to strangers in the street, to publicly affirm—and to
invite others to affirm—pleasure in the suffering of others. This is a
cultural psychology of objectification and dehumanization. But to
characterize it merely as the result of pervasive incitement is inadequate.
Sadism of course is hardly restricted to Palestinian
culture. Native American tribes routinely tortured and killed their captives
for sport. Torture is rife in Afghan and Pakistani society, as well as in
Mexico and Central America. ISIS broadcasts its beheadings, crucifixions and
mass killings as messages to their enemies and to display religious devotion
and resolve.
European and North American cultures are hardly
virtuous—recall Abu Ghraib, not to mention Auschwitz—but today sadism is the
individual exception rather than the societal rule. Systematizing it in
culture is anathema. With the exception of warfare, elites that set trends
and values, religious authorities, educators, media and politicians, never
endorse sadism.
The leaders of Palestinian culture do. As Gaza's Sheikh
Muhammad Sallah put it, "My brother in the West Bank: Stab! My
brother is the West Bank: Stab the myths of the Talmud in their minds! My
brother in the West Bank: Stab the myths about the temple in their
hearts!" This merely operationalized Palestinian president Mahmoud
Abbas' dehumanizing
call to arms: "Al-Aksa is ours and so is the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre. They have no right to desecrate them with their filthy feet. We
won't allow them to do so and we will do whatever we can to defend
Jerusalem." To these we may add generations of Fatah newspapers, Hamas
summer camps, Friday sermons, children's TV characters like Nahoul
the bee, and much more.
Individual Palestinians, of course, are disgusted by
kidnapping and murder, by rocket attacks, and by the inevitable retaliation.
But few speak out for fear of ostracism and violence. Palestinian culture as
a whole rejects empathy with Israelis as deviance.
Why the inability to feel a human connection with
Jews and Israelis? One explanation is that their experience at the hands of
Israelis is so uniquely terrible that however Palestinians respond is logical
and virtuous. In this narrative dispossession and 'occupation' legitimize
Palestinian violence, which is not really violence at all but ' legitimate
resistance' by victims par excellence.
But the fetish of 'resistance' and victimhood leads
to another notable Palestinian cultural trait, masochism. The ideology of
steadfastness and resistance has long celebrated Palestinian ability to
endure pain, much of which it creates itself.
Decades of theatrical – and individual – violence
necessarily and by design provoked Israeli responses. At every step potential
gains were secondary to inflicting real and psychological pain on Israeli
civilians and the political-cultural goal of 'publicizing the Palestinian
cause.' Israeli counterattacks were used to rally support, quash peaceful
voices, and cement the reign of the PLO and then Hamas. Retaliation was
demanded and then reveled in, amidst blood and ashes, reinforcing the
self-perception of Palestinian victimhood.
The goal of Hamas's rocket campaign of 2014 was
sadistic, random destruction, but the construction of an entire battlespace
within and below Gaza's civilian population was deeply masochistic. Tunnels
connected homes, clinics and schools in order to be tactically useful for
fighting and strategically useful when destroyed. The population was not
merely a human shield for Hamas, but a line of defense that Hamas knew would
be destroyed. When tunnel entrances are behind someone's kitchen sink, to what
extent were Gaza's civilians also aware of Hamas's strategy? They became,
willingly and not, human sandbags.
Conventional terrorism has a group context that
rationalizes violence and states "we are the resistance." Today's
interpersonal violence manifests culture at the individual level, where
sadism and masochism are no longer political but supremely personal. They
appear unmoored from notions of cause and effect that motivate political
violence like hostage-taking or even bombings, designed to provoke fear and
specific actions like freeing prisoners.
Masochism has effects beyond dead civilians and the
desired international condemnation. It demands that Palestinian society be
dragged by the violence of the street, by factions and "rogue
cells," whose unauthorized and untimely violence must be endorsed lest
resistance be 'betrayed.' The deepest 'cycle of violence' is the individual
who invites punishment for the whole, which must then be endorsed and
endured.
The masochism of the current stabbing campaign is
apparent, since any rational analysis based on experience would conclude that
Israelis will suffer but Palestinians will ultimately suffer more. But
against this is something else, captured neatly in Hamas' preaching "Killing Jews is
worship that draws us close to Allah." Here is a religious appeal to
a higher reality that cannot be refuted by logic or experience. Masochism is
an avenue to salvation, transforming murderers into heavenly beings.
Why a culture of sadism and masochism? Some of the
answer is the experience of the Palestinians across the past 100 or 150 years
with the Turks, British, and Jews. But it is also the mutually reinforcing
natures of patriarchal,
theocratic, and authoritarian (PTA) culture and Islamic ideology.
In cultures with nuclear families and not clans,
where the individual is the ultimate locus of free will and where politics
have no divine sanction, failures—like acts that invite retaliation—are cause
to replace leaders, behavior, or ideas.
But PTA cultures have entirely different logic;
predictable failures usefully generate adverse conditions that must then be
overcome by more of the same. Failure reinforces the existing culture, its
leaders, and general resolve. Provocations must be therefore redoubled.
Failure is success; adversity has been created and must be surmounted. And proclamations
that "My son is an offering to the Al-Aqsa, congratulations to him
on the Martyrdom-death" are ideological keys to the continued cycle of
power and suffering.
What is the response to sadomasochism and religion in
international affairs? First is to recognize it for what it is, an entirely
different set of cultural premises and behaviors, with self-reinforcing
logic, that plays off superficial Western images of victims and victimizers.
Second, notions of collective gain, through
negotiation or strategies of coercion and benefits, may apply partially or
not at all. Finally, one must take Palestinian leaders at their word and
recognize that they are playing a zero sum game in which Israel simply cannot
exist.
When suffering is embraced, when one side truly loves
death more than life, how can peace be made? What is the price and who is
willing to pay? These questions remain unanswered.
Alexander H. Joffe, a
Shillman-Ginsburg fellow at the Middle East Forum, is a historian and
archaeologist. |
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