Denial: a defense mechanism involving a disavowal or failure
consciously to acknowledge thoughts, feelings, desires, or aspects
of reality that would be painful or unacceptable, as when a person
with a terminal illness refuses to acknowledge the imminence of
death. (Colman, A.M. Dictionary of Psychology. New York: Oxford
Press, 2001. p.194)
For academic purposes, Colman's definition of denial is good and
sufficient. Only in life, the picture is much more complicated. Not
only do different defense mechanisms usually coincide, they might
work synergistically with some basic psychological
assumptions.
If we imagine a collective of typical Zionist Israelis, we could
say that their collective psychology is organized around basic
"unchallengeable" assumptions - that we are pure, we are right, we
have high moral values, we don't do evil, we are victims and we are
united. In the collective's eyes, its army conducts itself with
"purity of arms," meaning that it uses only unavoidable force, only
for self-defense.
The role of the denial mechanism in human psychology is to
facilitate passage from knowing to not knowing, as well as to not
remembering unacceptable knowledge. In this way denial helps the
collective ignore the fact that, although they own the largest and
mightiest army in the Middle East, they feel that their existence
is threatened by the Palestinians, who have no air force, no navy
and no sophisticated weapons. The fear is real, only the facts on
which it is based are incoherent.
The collective is held together by a common feeling of victimhood,
given the Jews' long history of victimization, and despite Israel's
military might, it still maintains this victim identity, always
prepared for the inevitable catastrophe. Closely connected to this
identity is, in its most extreme form, the belief that "the whole
world is against us." The "Arabs" become part of this ahistorical
enemy entity. The profound feeling that Jews have been persecuted
throughout history - without consideration of any historical or
sociopolitical factors - takes precedence over the facts of
Israel's current strength.
Another important Zionist axiom is that Palestine was an empty
land. "A land without people for a people without a land" is a
well-known early Zionist slogan, (attributed to Israel Zangwill in
1892). This belief was very much needed at the time: It allowed
Zionists to maintain their self-image as righteous people by
avoiding the notion of taking another people's land. But the land
was not empty; therefore, the collective implemented an active
non-seeing mechanism: Its members actually saw an empty land.
Forced Existence vs. Coexistence
"Forced existence" is a "soft," not well-defined term. It cannot be
found in textbook indexes. At the same time, it sounds coherent,
meaningful and even familiar, possibly because forced existence is
part of the human condition. The vast majority of our being or
existence is forced upon us: No one chooses to be born; we cannot
choose our parents, time and place of birth, sex, race, color,
talents, intelligence or other aspects of our selves. These are
forced on our existence and play a crucial part in shaping
it.
Forced existence also encompasses those imposed by humans on
others, for example in punitive institutions, in concentration
camps and in personal and collective lives under occupation. Under
military occupation, most aspects of human life are subjected to
forced existence. Over the last 40 years, Israel has exercised its
power over the Palestinian population in the occupied territories
through nearly absolute control over day-to-day life. This is
expressed most prominently in the Israeli control over
Palestinians' mobility - through a system of sieges, roadblocks,
closures and an arbitrary permit regime.
Israel also uses direct violence: The policy of assassinations and
arrests is a major part of how Israel perpetuates the occupation.
Now more than ever, emphasis is placed on control by means of
killing and destruction. The entire Palestinian population is a
target for Israeli army strikes, in that the intentional
destruction of civilian infrastructures, as in the case of the
bombing of electric turbines in the Gaza Strip, disables essential
civil systems such as health care, water and sewage, education,
work and trade. Such a death blow to the Palestinian economy
inevitably results in forced existence of poverty, malnutrition and
psychological trauma.
A typical junction in the Zionist collective mindset is where
denial and the national mythos meet with deliberate lies. Even if
the policymakers know everything about the forced existence of the
Palestinians created by the occupation, the collective's public
opinion, which actively does not wish to know the truth, clings to
the national mythos of being good, right, just, etc. So they plant
in the very heart of this junction the concept of
"coexistence."
At the core of the concept is the assumption that Israelis and
Palestinians are two equal partners who engage each other
symmetrically. This way of conceptualizing the occupation's reality
provides Israeli liberals a comfortable psychological setting for
disregarding the fundamental difference between the violent actions
performed by the Israeli occupier and those performed by the
occupied Palestinians. The denial of the real imbalance of power
between the occupier and the occupied is one of the main components
of their psychology.
The occupation brought about new dynamics in the collective's
denial mechanism: The original denial of Palestinian existence, the
"empty land" posited by early Zionism, ended; now the Palestinians'
existence must be obvious, since they are needed as objects of
forced existence.
Yet the Zionist collective, including the "good," "liberal"
Israelis, has genuine difficulty in engaging the Other, the
Palestinians. They therefore tell themselves the false story of
coexistence - the false inner image of the occupier as benevolent
subject who considers the occupied Palestinians as equal in agency,
rather than as the object of domination and control. The
Israeli-Palestinian existence abounds with examples of how the
concept of coexistence serves denial and wrongdoing on the Israeli
side.
For example, Route 443, between the Jewish town of Modi'in and
Jerusalem, has been closed to Palestinians for the last six years.
It includes 9.5 kilometers that run through the Palestinian West
Bank, on confiscated Palestinian land where many of their olive
trees were uprooted under the justification of local "public
needs," i.e., the coexistence of Israelis and Palestinians. Route
443 had once been the main road between six Palestinian villages
and Ramallah, as well as the rest of the West Bank. Now some
250,000 Palestinians are forced to spend three or four times more
money and time to travel to other parts of the West Bank. Many
cannot afford it, financially or due to health reasons, which means
no access to education, work, health care or social and family
connections.
The vague and decisive border between coexistence and forced
existence is such that coexistence yields to forced existence:
While forced existence is the harsh reality of the occupation,
coexistence is idealization, denial and mystification. The Israeli
Jewish drivers on Route 443 do not see the Palestinian villagers -
school children, women and men of all ages - who must contend with
roadblocks and detours in summer's cruel heat and in winter's muddy
dirt.
Why don't the drivers see the misery of the Palestinians on the
edges of the modern road? If one doesn't want to look at the forced
existence of the Palestinians, one doesn't see. And one doesn't
want to look, for their forced existence doesn't accord with the
mythological coexistence that justifies the occupation. Moreover,
there is the threat of undesirable feelings like identifying with
the Palestinians, or guilt for the violations of human rights that
they are committing. Or even worse, they may begin to pose
questions like, "Is all this really necessary and helpful?" "Is
there any coexistence at all?" Denial works to avoid such
possibilities.
However, there has been a significant change in this denial
mechanism, from total denial of the Palestinians' existence to
mixed denial: the imaginary or hypocritical concept of coexistence
that denies the reality of forced existence. There is a glimmer of
hope in this shift, for hypocrisy means that there is some
awareness of uncomfortable feelings at work. Individuals as well as
collectives are reacting to shame and guilt, among other emotions,
with hypocrisy. This can be contrasted with the fact that there is
no hypocrisy in situations involving outright cruelty, racism and
genocide, when leaders declare without euphemism their intention to
kill, expel, transfer, torture, etc. and their belief in these
acts. Therefore, we have learned to appreciate this kind of
hypocrisy as a sign of some morality.
While less obvious, the Israeli occupiers also live under forced
existence. The collective has forced upon itself a rigid regime of
denial and a system of basic assumptions and axioms that are not
open to examination or to any kind of critical thinking. They
create a vicious circle that traps the collective without a way
out, creating a perpetual circle of militarism and warfare.
A central axiom in this mindset is that Israel wants and craves
peace and that wars are always forced upon it; the Others, meaning
the Palestinians and Arabs in general, are always the warmongers.
In this way the Zionist Israelis' forced existence has caused them
to rally to one war after another without stopping to think about
why they are going to kill and get killed. The axiom of Israel's
pursuit of peace is by far stronger than reality.
The collective Zionist Israeli mentality sees the occupation as a
constant condition. The contradiction between its claim of profound
willingness to have peace and the prolonged occupation belongs to
the psycho-political zone of denial, i.e., the collective inability
to confront this contradiction.
In order to maintain the occupation and not confront the
contradiction, the occupier needs an object on which to perpetuate
domination and control. Therefore, the occupied Palestinians are
forced to play the role of a voiceless, powerless child. They
cannot be conceived as subjects, or the occupier's crimes will come
to light. When the mute child tries to rebel, it is an intolerable
threat to the occupier's identity and psychological boundaries, for
if the rebellion succeeds, it might force the occupier to talk to
and consider the child a partner, a mature subject, an Other with
his own mind, needs and demands.
Considering the Palestinians as subjects would also force the
occupier to start taking responsibility for his aggression, a
psychological process that he is neither willing to take on nor
capable of. The occupier is trapped in his own forced existence; he
cannot change his conduct even though this would benefit both
sides.
In order for the occupier's mentality to achieve a state of
psychological and political change, the occupier must learn the
lesson of compassion. Compassion is the tool we all require in
order to take responsibility for our innate aggression. We are all
born with some amount of aggression; the crucial question is
whether we will learn to take responsibility for our aggression,
through the shame and guilt we feel within ourselves. Immature
hypocritical conduct should give way to psychological growth and
development, leading to a higher psychological degree of
compassion. In practical terms, it means that the occupier will
have the strength to give up the occupation. How Israelis could
further develop this necessary compassion is the subject of a
future article I hope to write.
While so many aspects of our human existence are "forced" upon us
by circumstances of birth, we enjoy freedom of choice in our moral
conduct, the actions we take and those we choose not to, according
to our moral values.