(Author: Babs Barron, Vol. 67, No. 3, Chanukah 2012)
While acknowledging that he contributed much to the study of the human psyche, I am not a disciple of Freud. That being said, I believe that his notion of the eternal conflict between the two instinctual drives, Eros (towards love/life) and Thanatos (towards death and decay), is particularly apposite when one looks at the Palestinian/Arab being in the world.1
According to Freud’s theory, Eros inspires us to strive for individual happiness and informs our wishes to unite with others. It drives living organisms to develop. Thanatos, on the other hand, represents decay, and drives the organism toward a return to the inorganic, to death. Freud posits that these two forces are in conflict with one another and that this conflict and interaction determines the development of the individual’s life (and, I would argue, ultimately his/her contribution to societal culture).
This cannot be said to apply to the policies and actions of Palestinian governments, at least one of whose ministers is on record as saying that Palestinians desire death, which they say they love more than life.2 While Palestinian leaders do not include themselves in the kind of behaviours which bear this out, the disposable rank and file, and in particular young children, are carefully indoctrinated into severing themselves from their natural human instincts to survive so as to perpetuate hatred down the generations.
If Freud is right, and we are indeed all engaged in our own struggles between Eros and Thanatos, why are not all societies as conflicted and murderously inclined as those of Hamas and other Islamist-led regimes? The majority of humankind is not continuously enacting this dichotomous battle between love and regeneration and hatred and annihilation as part of its very social identity.
Although such conflict exists, emerging periodically in instances of armed conflict, in most societies it does not form the natural relationship between peoples as is the case in the dominant Palestinian culture.
One explanation may be that for most people in developed societies, Eros and Thanatos exist at opposite ends of a continuum. In most mature people, Eros is able to override Thanatos for the majority of the time, or at least there is a balance between the two which makes life comfortable, even fulfilling. Such people have developed sufficiently to be able to make a synthesis between the two, which translates into how they interact with and relate to others in the wider society. However, this requires cognitive and emotional maturity and the capability to tolerate a degree of frustration and uncertainty until that synthesis is complete. I would argue that if enough people in any society possess these attributes then Eros tends to override Thanatos for most of the time.
By contrast, in societies dominated by radical Islamist ideologies, the ability to arrive at a mature, balanced synthesis is rendered impossible for many of its members. A prime example of this is the case of the Palestinians, whose self-destructive behaviour towards Israel and towards each other would seem to indicate that they are developmentally, cognitively and psychologically ‘stuck’. For them, a healthy synthesis between Eros and Thanatos is difficult, if not impossible, not least because they cannot tolerate the psychological frustration which necessarily occurs before a successful synthesis can take place.
Palestinians and others subject to the same modes of thought repeat the behaviours which cause them anguish rather than trying a different course that might prove more fruitful. When faced with failure or uncertainty, their tendency is to resort to the behaviours they are used to rather than to try something different, not least because of the incapability of tolerating the above mentioned frustration and/or an apparent lack of apprehension of cause and effect. Thanatos, in effect, generally wins. Lacking the capability to reason differently and break free, Palestinians become their own self-fulfilling prophecy. This is firmly imbedded through Islam’s relentless focus on the afterlife (or more particularly, on the ways in which the devout can avoid the torments of Hell), which leaves its adherents little emotional energy to risk attempting anything new, and as a consequence leaves them wide open to exploitation by their leaders and jihadi/suicide bomber recruiters.
However, it would be misleading and unnecessarily dichotomous to classify all Palestinian Arab attitudes and behaviour in terms of the dominance of the death-glorifying Thanatos instinct. We know, for example, that there are many collaborative projects between Israelis and Palestinians, regardless of the official stance of Palestinian/Arab governments. These could not take place if Palestinian society was totally Thanatos-driven.3 Whilst fewer such projects are in terms initiated by Palestinians, it is nevertheless significant that Palestinians participate in them.
It is tempting to echo the polarisation which already exists in the reporting of the Israel Palestinian conflict by designating Israel as the Eros in this situation. It is true for the most part that Israel’s behaviour and ‘being-in-the-world’ realism places her firmly at the Eros end of the spectrum, not least because Israel is forward looking rather than rooted in the past and, as we see, contributes much to the welfare of other nations in terms of sharing with them the fruits of her scientific research and technology.
Nevertheless, I would argue that Israel, too, has her own struggles with Thanatos although she does not glorify the death instinct in as literal a way as do her Palestinian neighbours.
Israel has survived wars waged to annihilate her and her people and her commitment notwithstanding to continue to grow and look forward shows her to be Eros-inclined. That being said, aspects of her political behaviour in the wake of them arguably bring her perilously close to Thanatos. Likewise, being a democracy, she also has difficulties within her borders with people who wish her not to exist in her present form and who hold a rosily unrealistic picture of coexistence within a bi-national Israeli- Palestinian state (the “One State Solution”) which, I would argue, is based more on wishful thinking than on reality.
Israel’s experience after its withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, carried out without firm promises of peace from either Hamas or Fatah, left a Thanatos legacy that the country still endures. The renowned commentator Daniel Pipes described the Gaza withdrawal as one of the worst errors ever made by a democracy and argued that it jeopardized the very existence of the Israeli people.4 Since Israel left Gaza, thousands of qassam missiles and other rockets have been launched on Israeli civilians from the territory. There was also, of course, the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit, who was held incommunicado and in solitary confinement for over five years and was only released in exchange for 1027 Palestinian prisoners (some of whom were convicted terrorists). The agreement to release these death-dealing enemies of Israel brought Israel even closer to Thanatos since it emboldened the terrorist supporters among the Palestinians. All of the foregoing would seem to bear out Pipes’ contention.
Additionally, and depending where one is located on the Israeli political scene, politicians like Avigdor Lieberman, who in November 1996 labelled Arab members of the Knesset who had met with Hamas as terror sympathisers and hoped for their execution, lean more towards Thanatos. Netanyahu’s concept of a loyalty oath, requiring allegiance to Israel as a Jewish state by all new Israeli citizens, caused great controversy but is less clear cut, and may be argued to be the reasonable reaction of a people under strain. Although the oath will not affect current citizens, including the Israeli Arab community, the Israeli-Arab Member of Knesset Ahmed Tibi has argued that it relegates Israel’s Palestinian citizens to inferior status.5 The oath will mainly affect Palestinians living in the West Bank who want to marry Palestinians (regarded by the Israeli government as Israeli Arabs) who live in Israel.
These controversies notwithstanding, however, (and controversies are one sign of a healthy democracy), I would still argue that Eros still predominates Israel’s collective psyche given her contribution to the world in spite of the dangers she faces.
It would be inspirational indeed if the synthesis between Eros and Thanatos in the mature individual could be echoed in the relationship between Israelis and between Israel and her neighbours. In order for that to happen, there needs to be a considerable loosening of the Thanatos-driven behaviour towards Israelis and Jews by the Palestinian governments (and a corresponding adaptation towards forward-looking, life-embracing Eros), in public as well as in private, so that the Palestinian people will then pursue a compromise solution that must surely benefit both parties. Jew-hatred by Palestinians, deliberately cranked up by an Arab legacy of antisemitism underwritten by the Quran, make that well-nigh impossible. Until that can be overcome, the Eros-Thanatos dichotomy and the behaviours it engenders seem destined to repeat themselves. Likewise, the extreme right in Israel, made suspicious by Arab rhetoric and repeated disappointment at the peace table, not to mention the consequences of the withdrawal from Gaza, seems immovable and stuck in its resistance to change.
Babs Barron (who writes under a pseudonym so as to keep her work and professional life entirely separate from her politics) is a psychologist in independent practice in the UK.
Notes
- Freud, S., The ego and the id, New York: W.W. Norton, 1962.
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWIDZ7Jpdqg –MEMRI TV
- See, for example, http://www.trust.org/alertnet/blogs/thebattle-for-water/good-water-neighbours-collaborate-overwaters-shared-by-palestinians-israelis-and-jordanians; http://israel21c.org/social-action-2/daughters-for-lifefund-transcends-tragedy/; http://israel21c.org/socialaction-2/learning-to-love-the-neighbors-video/ http:// israel21c.org/social-action-2/greener-ties-for-jordan-andisrael/; http://israel21c.org/social-action-2/peace-from-thegrassroots/; http://israel21c.org/environment/eco-park-fora-green-peace/; http://israel21c.org/news/an-israelipalestinian-spring/
- http://www.danielpipes.org/2861/the-gaza-withdrawal-ademocracy-killing-itself
- http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israeli-arab-mkloyalty-oath-relegates-israel-s-palestinian-citizens-toinferior-status-1.320624
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