I will not have war in my heart

Israel, dehumanisation and the Drama Triangle

*Disclaimer: I denounce all violence against all people. I stand for and with the human rights of all people.

Most of the time I have spent with Jewish people has been in very deep spiritual containers, and those experiences brought me a profound appreciation and love for that spiritual culture. Most of the contexts in which I’ve spent time with Israelis have been whilst travelling, and I have always found them to be warm, open-minded, loving, deep-thinking people.

I say this to illustrate that my experience of the people of Israel has absolutely nothing to do with the actions of the state of Israel; in fact to me they seem utterly divorced.

I know that this cannot in fact be the case (Israel is a democracy), however being half British I am all too aware of the issues in representation, the effect of propaganda and the naivety of good-hearted people. And being half German I understand those things from another era and also generational trauma.*

Obviously there is a lot of complexity around what is currently happening in Israel and Palestine currently. I do not wish to simplify it or make as if I understand it - I don’t, not by a long shot.

But there are things I need to say.

This morning, having read quotes about their stance on Gaza from the Israeli head of state, military and other party members, I noticed as I sat on my yoga mat that I was finding it hard not to feel hatred towards them. To label them as “evil” people and allow that flame of bitterness in my heart to grow into a raging fire.

So easy.

So easy to let that righteous anger seethe and grow. To be sure you have the moral high ground, that you are right and they are wrong, that they deserve to be vilified and viewed with disgust, perhaps even treated in a disrespectful way.

And the second you allow yourself to think like that, you are behaving exactly the same way as they are.

The moment we dehumanise someone, we cut ourselves off from our own humanity. We forget that everyone has their reasons, good reasons, for being the way they are, for behaving as they do. We forget that when we hurt others, that hurt is multiplied a thousandfold in ourselves.

Choosing peace

Yeshua said, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do”.

I often think of that when I feel anger about someone’s behaviour, and I know with absolute certainty that it is true. If people understood in their hearts what they were doing, the spiritual ramifications of it (on themselves and on others), they would not commit those actions.

I vehemently do not want war in my heart.

I know that that energy is the exact same energy as that which I say I don’t want in the world. The energy of war is the energy of division, of us against them, of “right” against “wrong” - by its very nature it can only create more war.

So I ask for help to feel compassion for those people who have so much hatred in their hearts. How awful, to be carrying that. How awful to be responsible for so many deaths, the deaths of children. They will never know peace in this lifetime. What a tragedy that is.

We must hold all people who commit terrible atrocities with this love in our hearts, because otherwise we are simply perpetuating the cycle of hatred, division, and war.

The psychology of oppression

That Hamas exists I regard as entirely the creation of the Israeli state.

If you systematically suppress and dehumanise people, they will eventually rise up and act in dehumanised ways; this is basic human psychology.

*Another side-note: this is so basic in fact that I have to ask myself if this can have been a conscious objective of the Israeli state. A dark thought indeed.

Perpetrator energy (and Israel is by its very existence a colonising oppressor force) is active energy. Victim energy is passive. The nature of the human spirit is (thank God) is in such contrast to suppression that it will necessarily eventually confront the perpetrator energy in an attempt to regain its lost power.

This is a healthy movement.

But when there is no goodwill on the side of the perpetrator, no remorse, no understanding that they have been in the wrong by creating an energy imbalance (which, just to e clear, is necessarily the case when you displace a population from their lands and force them into what amounts to a cage with no rights or opportunities) then you have a push-push situation in which both sides become perpetrators (and both sides become victims).

Cycles of life

Life moves in cycles. They live within each of us, and they live through generations.

Every action has a reaction; that is the nature of life. This continuous interplay between all things gives rise to the magnificent range of biodiversity and human expression - it is a sacred law.

But the downside of this is is apparent in a species that exhibits the problematic combination of a raging ego and the inability to re-regulate its nervous system following conflict or stress.

In human civilisation we have of course also created the conditions in which people experience chronic stress - something that we are not biologically or psychologically equipped to deal with.

The result is generational trauma.

All of us have some of this, in different ways and to differing extents. People of all cultures have inherited trauma from the wars, displacements and cultural inequalities that different generations have had to face.

The problem lies not so much in the trauma we carry but in our response to it. If we view ourselves as victims, we place ourselves within the drama triangle of victim, perpetrator and rescuer. Once we are emotionally invested in the belief that we are victims, it is a small psychological sidestep into the role of perpetrator.

The Israel-Hamas war seems to me to be perhaps the strongest example of this in the world today; the belief that the Jewish people are victims leads to a justification of perpetrator behaviour.

How to create a bully

To most sane, postmodern people, the concept of an eye for an eye seems barbaric, outrageous, insane even.

To people who strongly believe they are victims it is almost an inevitable response.

This is exactly what bullying behaviour towards young children produces; a bully. That child will then bully other children in an attempt to rectify the power imbalance they have been subjected to.

Of course from a psychological perspective it’s clear that that’s not going to make the bully feel better, or help them reclaim their sense of personal power.

And yet this is exactly the behaviour that we are allowing the Israeli state to engage in with the Palestinian people.

A people who have been subjected to a position not only of inferiority but stripped of the most basic human rights for decades, living in what is effectively an open-air prison, treated in an abjectly dehumanising way (while the world watches on, doing nothing) will of course eventually behave in an inhuman way.

From a psychological perspective, it is no surprise whatsoever that Hamas exists, or that it is performing the monstrous actions we have seen in the last two weeks.

Genocide

I am ashamed, once again, of our leaders, so-called, who do nothing to stand for the values that the EU supposedly stands for. Who continue to not only accept the conditions of the Gaza strip (and its very existence) but now are also allowing the siege of Gaza by the Israeli army to continue with no adherence to international law.

Never again?

What is happening now in Gaza is beginning to feel like it goes beyond ethnic cleansing and is open genocide. Statements by Israeli officials make it very clear that this is their intention - to eradicate Gaza (and all its people).

And still we do nothing. How long will we let this continue?

Trapped in our own European guilt toward the Jewish people, too paralysed to point out that they are committing the same violence they were subjected to. Still embedded in our position as their “rescuer” and refusing to acknowledge that we are living in a very different time where Jewish people are no longer the ones needing rescuing.

And so it goes on. The wheel turns, the cycle continues. Victim becomes perpetrator, creating more victims who in turn become perpetrators.

Do we not have enough psychological awareness to understand this yet? Or the courage to stand up to it and say “Enough”?

I say it, here, now: ENOUGH.

We, the equality-loving humans of this world demand a ceasefire, the liberation of the Palestinian people and an end to this cycle of oppression.