Linking the Holocaust and Israeli Abuse of the Palestinians

By Gene Knudsen Hoffman

In 1980 I was walking in London when I saw a huge sign which read: "Meeting for Worship for the Tortured and the Torturers." It was sponsored by the London Quakers. I was astonished. As a Quaker pacifist, I believed that I should have no enemy and care for the wounded on all sides of every battle. But put the torturers on the same level as the tortured? I'd never thought of that.

The thought opened a whole new chapter of my life. I began to wonder why people tortured others. I reasoned that if I could know the answer, it might open new possibilities for peacemaking and reconciliation.

In that same year, I worked on both sides of the Israel-Palestine Green Line, moving back and forth interviewing both Israeli and Palestinian peace people. Though there was no intifada and no stone-throwing children, the suffering of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation was horrifying. What was being done to them seemed madness. I began to wonder whether the brutal treatment of the Palestinians by the Israeli government, the Israeli military, and even many of the Israeli people themselves had anything to do with Jewish suffering during and after the Jewish Holocaust in Europe.

I began reading everything I could find on the subject. As the years went on, I also learned about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—a tragic condition which can affect soldiers even years after they emerge seemingly unscathed from battle. Triggered by terror from a catastrophic event "outside the range of normal human experience," it can produce a variety of symptoms. These may include depression, isolation, withdrawal, convulsions of rage, emotional numbing, alienation, intrusive thoughts, horrifying flashbacks, a form of hypervigilance akin to paranoia, and more.

Many veterans have used alcohol or drugs to blot out terrifying memories. Many revert to violence when they feel threatened. By now, there may have been more suicides among Vietnam veterans than there were soldiers killed in that long and tragic war.

In the hope of understanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more deeply, and of being able to feel compassion instead of anger and despair, I joined an American Friends Service Committee trip to the Middle East in January 1992. On that trip I learned that there is a new consciousness of the long-term effects of the concentration camp experience on Jewish survivors, for whom there were no healing processes available at the time they were released. Some people are beginning to call it PTSD. Like combat veterans, Holocaust survivors experience both fear of surfacing memories and fear "that it will happen again." Many Israelis appear to be affected by a "siege mentality," which is understandable. Throughout our trip there was no way of forgetting we were in a "war zone."

There was no way of forgetting we were in a "war zone."

The suffering of Palestinians is deep and wide. They see the land they call their homeland shrinking and their children dying from malnutrition, disease, and bullets. Many Palestinians are homeless, jobless or both. Palestinian schools are most often closed; there are imprisonments, beatings, killings, daily disappearances. Like soldiers, or the concentration camp inmates of World War II, Palestinians live lives of rage and terror.

Dr. Jan Bastiaans, a Dutch psychiatrist, is an authority on the Holocaust syndrome, and has treated many survivors. In 1973 he wrote, "In recent years the Ka-tzet (concentration camp) syndrome has suddenly received general recognition...This concept is concerned with...pathological processes that occurred after the war in former concentration camp prisoners...The Ka-tzet syndrome is the expression of a permanent, chronic obstruction of sound human relationships. The victims are not free from the concentration camp...Behind their adaptation facade continues to live the child or adult of [that time] in all fear, in all misery, in all powerlessness."

Dr. Haim Dasberg, an associate professor of psychiatry at the Hebrew University and medical director of the Ezrat Nashim Jerusalem Mental Health Center, has written extensively on PTSD and the Israeli army. Now living on the outskirts of West Jerusalem in an apartment pleasingly filled with books, paintings, and oriental rugs, he resisted conversion efforts by the Christian couple in Holland who adopted him after his father was put into a Nazi concentration camp and his mother went into hiding.

As a therapist for the Israeli military, he encourages battle-shocked soldiers to return to the front because he believes there is no cure for PTSD except the return to community and belonging. "If you leave your comrades in war, you are exiled and cannot function again," he writes.

Dr. Dasberg and three colleagues have written thoughtfully on the psychological disintegration that can follow severe trauma, explaining: "The trauma forces the opening of boundaries (in the sufferer). This forced, open state and the inability to terminate it is accompanied by intense emotions, immense fears. The usual supports...have been drastically de-structured. The final realization is that the rules which define reality are not operational anymore and the individual loses the capacity to function and collapses."

An American-born Israeli, Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom, heads Israel's Clergy for Peace. A tall, slender, compassionate young man, he explains: "The Holocaust has left Jews so scarred we believe powerlessness is a sin. We feel the whole world is hostile to us. This is sick behavior. Our political agenda is irrational because of the Holocaust. Our Jewish state has been implemented at the expense of the Palestinians (partly) because spiritual Zionism changed to statehood after the Nazi persecution. Our agenda is corrupt because we're not permitting the Palestinians to reunify. We Jews feel guilt toward the Palestinians and we're unwilling to have a dialogue with them because it will be so unpleasant."

Similar Symptoms

An Israeli psychiatrist, who wished to remain anonymous, warned me that "It is very dangerous to suggest that our people in government still suffer from the Holocaust. They are our government, our leaders—they cannot be crazy." Pressed as to whether these leaders "suffer from PTSD," he responded, "Holocaust survivors do not suffer from PTSD. But they have similar symptoms."

Chaim Shur, the generous, gentle editor-in-chief of Israel's liberal New Outlook magazine, explained: "The Holocaust is the worst trauma in Jewish history. The whole world was killing us. No one did anything to prevent it. The Holocaust syndrome invades a large part of our life. Five hundred thousand people in Israel are Holocaust survivors and now there is a second generation..." The editor demurred, however, when asked, "Do survivors suffer from PTSD?"

"PTSD is not a scientific diagnosis," he said. "I have a daughter-in-law who comes from Holocaust survivors. I don't accept it."

Dr. Eliezer Witztum, senior psychotherapist at the Ezrat Nashim Hospital, who wrote a book entitled The History of PTSD and the Israeli Army, said PTSD was denied in every Israeli war, including the 1973 war, and all PTSD data was edited out of psychological papers.

"PTSD sufferers were treated as cowards," he explained. "Officers and mental health workers were told that if they recognized this phenomenon, they should not encourage it...But, in 1973, 30 percent of the casualties were PTSD sufferers and the military began to admit this was a problem. However, in 1982, they withdrew their admission and cut the budgets for psychiatrists."

Dr. Witztum said that although Israelis generally felt "the Holocaust was a Pandora's box and it was better not to talk about it," he believes there is a direct connection between the Holocaust and much of the subsequent tragic Israeli political behavior regarding the Palestinians. He spoke of Israel's loss of her spiritual connection and believes it must be regained before healing and peace can take place.

Today some of the most cogent voices about PTSD and the Holocaust are coming from the United States. In Rabbi Yonassan Gershom's article "Breaking the Cycle of Abuse" in the February 1992 issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, he writes "On a conscious level the Israelis are not purposely punishing the Palestinians for the Holocaust...But it is also true that people who have been abused will, when they come to power, abuse others because they do not have healthy models for exercising power. Abuse is passed down from generation to generation...unless there is some kind of therapy to teach new ways of coping with frustration and anger."

In an article entitled "Terrible Knowledge" in the November-December Networker, Jeffrey Jay extends PTSD not only to Holocaust and war survivors, but also to survivors of severe child abuse and uncontrollable rage and violence in some families.

"Some great individuals like Martin Luther King Jr., Elie Weisel, and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh lived through brutalization and drew from it visionary insights that have moved whole populations to greater compassion for human suffering," Jay writes. "These exemplars...suggest the possibility of return from exile for victims of trauma ...Their terrible knowledge is a message few can afford to refuse."

Thomas Greening, editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, writes: "The moral, philosophical, and religious context in which [a trauma's] meaning is interpreted by the sufferer is very important. Viktor Frankel wrote of his concentration camp experience in 1963: 'Human values are sometimes sustained and recreated in dehumanizing conditions.'"

I believe that America's Henry Wadsworth Longfellow summarized best what, challenged by that sign in London in 1980, I have learned from my own exploration of the link between the Holocaust and Israel's brutalization of the Palestinians: "If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find in each person's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility." All efforts at finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, I have concluded, will be more fruitful when the parties come to see peacemaking as a healing process. It is as necessary to traumatized peoples and nations as it is to individuals subjected to fear, rage or pain "outside the range of normal human experience."

Gene Knudsen Hoffman, author of four books, holds an M.A. in pastoral counseling. She worked with the Fellowship of Reconciliation and created its U.S.-U.S.S.R. Reconciliation Program.