February 1992, Page 27, 83

Seeing the Light

Breaking the Cycle of Abuse

By Rabbi Yonassan Gershom

(Editor's Note: In compiling 55 articles in the Washington Report's "Seeing the Light" series into a book, the editors invited the authors to submit an "update" on their present state of mind. Rabbi Gershom's "update" was as informative as his original submission, "The Peace Stone," which appeared in the April 1991 edition of the Washington Report. He thus becomes the only author, to date, to have two articles published in this popular series.)

Storytelling often works where polemics will not, because it bypasses our intellectual defense mechanisms to reach the heart and soul. It is for this reason that Jewish preachers have long used parables to get their point across. The early Hassidic masters were frequently able to bring about a sincere change of heart by telling a story about "someone else" in exactly the same situation. Both the rabbi and the listeners knew what the real agenda was but, by couching it in a story, the "teller of tales" made repentance possible without publicly humiliating the offenders and thereby compounding the problem.

"The Peace Stone" has all the elements of just such a traditional Hassidic story, because while it is a true encounter between myself and a Palestinian, it is also a mirror which allows the listener to examine his or her own attitudes in a non-threatening way. A Jew and a Palestinian, meeting face-to-face on a narrow trail where neither can pass unless they help each other-what a clear metaphor for the entire Palestinian-Israeli conflict!

Jewish audiences invariably grasp at the point when the Palestinian stranger "dumps" his anger on me. Based on past experience, most Jews fully expect the incident to escalate into anti-Jewish violence with only two alternatives: run or get into a fight. The nonviolent resolution of the conflict comes as a surprise, and serves as an opener for discussing ways to break the shame-blame-abuse cycle which has trapped us all in a vicious war.

One time after I told "The Peace Stone," a woman in the audience expressed the opinion that the Jews were dumping their anger about the Holocaust onto the Palestinians. My first reaction was to say no, that can't be happening. But, not long after that, I attended a workshop on dysfunctional family systems. As the speaker diagrammed the abuse cycle on the blackboard, I suddenly realized that I was looking at a psychological picture of the way Jews and Arabs often react to each other.

On a conscious level, Israelis are not purposely "punishing" Palestinians for the Holocaust; the very suggestion of such a thing is horrifying to most Jews. We sincerely see ourselves as basically ethical people who, after all, gave the world the Ten Commandments. And didn't we collectively vow that "never again" would such a thing as a Holocaust happen? True. But it is also true that people who have been abused will, when they come to power, tend to abuse others because they do not have healthy models for exercising power.

Abusers almost always turn out to be people who were themselves abused.

It happens all the time in dysfunctional families. Abuse is passed down from generation to generation. What a person experiences as a child, she in turn does to others as an adult, unless there is some kind of therapy to teach new ways of coping with frustration and anger. Without conscious effort to change behavior patterns, the dysfunctional coping mechanisms learned in childhood will take over during times of stress. This is why people who grew up in abusive families suddenly find themselves beating their children, often using the same verbal epithets that their own parents used, even though they vowed as children that they would never do that when they grew up. It is as if the brain somehow switches into "automatic," mindlessly falling back on old behavior patterns when the stress level gets too high.

What is true of individuals can also be true of nations. As someone once said, "Revolution means going in circles." It is relatively easy to overthrow a government, but far more difficult to oust the internalized oppression which causes us to "demonize" others. For example, the early Christians were persecuted by the Romans, and their own leaders no doubt exhorted them to forgive and forget. But when the Church later came to power, it ended up hunting down Jews, Muslims, and pagans with the Inquisition. In the same way, the Germans felt humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles after World War I, so they scapegoated the Jews in order to make themselves feel powerful again.

The Jews of Europe, who were abused by both the Church and the Nazis, dreamed for centuries of a utopia in the Holy Land. Unfortunately, there was no "40 years in the wilderness" between Nazi Germany and the founding of the State of Israel, and, without consciously realizing it, many Jews have indeed carried their unresolved rage against Hitler into Palestine.

At times it seems to me as if the entire Jewish community suffers from a collective case of post-traumatic stress disorder. Every Palestinian act of violence toward Israel triggers a group flashback to the Holocaust and all of the anger connected with it. This, in turn, causes Jews to react to Palestinians with a mixture of fear and rage, seeing them as Jew-hating Nazis rather than occupied people with legitimate grievances.

In addition, many Jews have subconsciously absorbed abusive attitudes that now seem "normal." Nowhere is this pattern of "identifying with the oppressor" more evident than in the way in which Jews deal with land issues. For many centuries Jews in Europe were outrightly forbidden to own land. When they did manage to circumvent this restriction, it was inevitably temporary. The ruling powers could and did confiscate Jewish property on a moment's notice, with the Jews themselves being expelled or killed. This pattern continued right up until the Holocaust.

Given this historical experience, is it any wonder that, when Israelis want a piece of Palestinian land, they feel perfectly justified in taking it? I have many times been given the explanation that, "This is how we Jews were treated and nobody said a word. So why is everyone so upset now? The Arabs can just move someplace else, the same as we did."

Defying All Logic

This callous attitude seems to defy all logic. How could a people who themselves have been homeless turn around and evict others? Logic says that they should have more compassion, not less, because they themselves know how oppression feels. But the abuse cycle is not logical. It is a set of totally irrational behaviors based on pain, fear, shame, guilt and anger.

Today the oppressed Palestinians also dream of having their own country, with liberty and justice for all. But the sad truth is that, unless there is some way to break this vicious cycle, when the Palestinians do get a state (as I believe they eventually will), they are just as likely to end up abusing whatever minorities dwell within their borders. Why? Because a whole generation of Palestinian children has grown up knowing only the humiliation of military occupation, where war and violence seem "normal." Like the Jews who survived the Holocaust to found the State of Israel, the current generation of Palestinians is deeply scarred by the dehumanizing experience of living in squalid refugee camps, and this is bound to affect the nature of their own state.

How, then, can we break this abusive cycle? I have no easy solutions, but I do believe that we can learn a lot by applying recent discoveries about the dynamics within dysfunctional families to the present situation. Abusers almost always turn out to be people who were themselves abused, and whose self-esteem has been severely damaged. Inside every Kahane is an angry little boy who was beaten up on the playground because he was a Jew, and inside every Palestinian "terrorist" is a child who was humiliated and dehumanized simply because he was an Arab. Both have fantasized what they would like to do to "get even," and when either one comes to power, he ends up acting exactly like his previous oppressors because that is the behavior he internalized when he was a victim.

A Third Alternative

Nonviolence training offers a third alternative to this "fight or flight" reaction. That alternative is respectful dialogue. Instead of each side struggling to be on top controlling the other, nonviolence teaches us how to interact as equal human beings seeking to solve a mutual problem. Once real dialogue has begun, both sides are frequently amazed at how similar their feelings and experiences really are. As they begin to empathize (literally "to feel together"), a bridge of understanding can be built.

This process does not erase history. In the real world, it is impossible simply to "forgive and forget," because "forgetting" often means refusing to acknowledge somebody else's pain. The Holocaust was real and the occupation is real, and denying the horror of either will not make the current problem go away. Rather than "forgive and forget," we need to forgive and move forward, working through our mutual problems together, while keeping the histories of both peoples intact. Only through openly confronting our psychological wounds can we begin to heal them and change our behavior toward each other.

Mahatma Gandhi's word for nonviolence, satyagraha, has often been mistranslated as "passive resistance," but it literally means "holding to the truth." There is nothing passive about true nonviolence. Anyone can hide behind a gun or a bomb and feel brave, but it takes a great deal more courage to hold to the truth under all circumstances. Sometimes that means actively confronting one's own inner "demons," while responding to an enemy with understanding and patience. A true practitioner of satyagraha is a warrior in every sense of the word, using truth, faith and love as the weapons for waging peace. This is not an easy path, but I do believe it can offer both Jews and Palestinians a way out of the madness that is destroying the souls of both our peoples.

Rabbi Yonassan Gershom is the author of two books and numerous articles on Jewish mysticism, and currently works as a nursing home chaplain in Minneapolis.

 

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