In this third installment in my series on Israel/Palestine, I advance a bold hypothesis, one which cannot possibly be defended on scientific grounds. But I do so on the basis of my personal experience in Israel-Palestine from 1992-1996 and several visits since then, including a five-week research stay in 1999 (in Bethlehem and Hebron). I’ve also read a good deal about the issue.
I am proposing that one way to explain the violence and brutality of Zionist settlers since the 1920s and of Israeli leaders during and after the 1948 founding of the State of Israel is to see it in light of psychological research on children suffering abuse. This research shows a likelihood that these children will in turn abuse their own children if they do not get significant trauma therapy (see this 2021 article in Psychology Today commenting on a 3-decade-long study published that same year, “Intergenerational transmission of child maltreatement in South Australia, 1986-2017: a retrospective cohort study”). Here is the relevant paragraph in the Psychology Today article:
“After establishing a clear link between mothers who suffered abuse or neglect during their childhood and the likelihood of their kids experiencing the same fate, the researchers emphasize the importance of supporting survivors of childhood maltreatment early in life and into adulthood as a critical step towards breaking this vicious cycle and protecting the unborn children of future generations from maltreatment.”
That parallel is far-fetched, you might say. After all, these are mothers who suffered from traumatic mistreatment growing up and who are at least 30 percent more likely to reproduce that same behavior toward their own offspring. But then you jump to the macro level and apply something that concerns individuals to a whole people group (the early Jewish newcomers to Palestine in the 1900-1920s were from Europe—known as Ashkenazi Jews). Add to that the fact that the Holocaust didn’t happen till late 1930s-1945.
Still, I will argue, the Jews as a people endured grievous hardship, from the four centuries of slavery in Egypt to the Babylonian exile; from the persecution under the Greek ruler Antiochus IV to the violent expulsion of the Jews from Palestine by the Romans in 70 CE (read this Jewish page, “The Four Exiles of the Jewish People”). Then from the times of the Crusades (1099 CE) to the 1930s, Jews suffered pogroms and all manner of abuse from Christians in Europe. Jews bear in their souls the pain and trauma of many terrors past.
Early Jewish terrorism in pre-WWII Palestine
The best historical work on this period was also Winner of the National Jewish Book Award—Bruce Hoffman’s 650-page Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947. Adam Kirsch’s review is entitled “Israel: The Original Terrorist State.” Hoffman’s research was based on the newly declassified documents of the British MI5. Here’s his opening summary of the book:
“From 1944 until 1947, Palestine witnessed a series of assassinations, abductions, and bombings, perpetrated by Jewish terrorists against the occupying British. During that period, some 140 British soldiers and policemen were killed, along with dozens of civilian bystanders. In the end, the terrorists got what they wanted, when Britain announced its intention to withdraw all its forces from Palestine and leave the fate of the country up to the fledgling United Nations.”
Naturally, this was not the only factor leading up to Israel’s independence in 1948. You should add the British Empire’s decline; the fallout of the Holocaust, with the United States putting immense pressure on the British “to admit Jewish refugees into Palestine”; finally, you must factor in the Jewish success in creating the infrastructure for a state, “complete with an illegal but tacitly tolerated army, the Haganah.”
“Still,” writes Kirsch, “it is possible that none of these factors would have succeeded in winning Israel’s independence, if the Jewish campaign of terror hadn’t raised the cost of the British occupation so high.” The story is “riveting”: how the waning superpower of the day is brought to its knees by “a few thousand determined militants”—the Jewish “anonymous soldiers.” The largest of the militant paramilitary organizations that broke away from the Haganah was the Irgun. Starting in the late 1930s, its foot soldiers assassinated dozens of British officials and law enforcement officers, though Arabs remained their main targets (the latter had attacked them first), mostly planting bombs in cafés and markets.
The Irgun’s “bloodiest attack” was masterminded by a new arrival from the Soviet prisons, Menachem Begin (who later became prime minister), the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 people in July 1946.
The Daleth (or Dalet) Plan
Ilan Pappé, a prominent member of Israel’s so-called New Historians, is a professor at the University of Exeter (UK), where he also directs the European Centre for Palestine Studies. His 2006 book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, documents the deliberate driving out of 750,000 Palestinian refugees from March 1948 to the armistice signed with the Arab nations the next year (see this helpful summary page by the Institute for Middle East Understanding—IMEU; see also this blog post by Ilan Pappé on the fiftieth anniversary of the State of Israel). These are the original Palestinian refugees, some of whom moved to Gaza, and others ended up in refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan. Another 300,000 were forced out by the 1967 war when Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights.
The official document laying out the plans for the campaign of terror that would drive out the maximum number of Palestinians from their towns and villages to make room for the coming Jewish state was called Plan Dalet. The IMEU page offers this translated excerpt from that document:
“Destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those population centers which are difficult to control continuously...
“Mounting search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state.”
Over 400 Palestinian villages were completely destroyed as a result and thousands of Palestinians left urban centers like Jaffa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem fleeing the violence. Bishara Awad, the founder and director of the Bethlehem Bible College where I taught for three years in the 1990s, tells the story of how his father was killed by a sniper bullet in what is now West Jerusalem (Jewish side) and how he fled with his mother and siblings to Bethlehem, leaving everything behind.
What about today?
A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then—something I will touch on in the next couple of posts. But what is sure is that the Hamas attacks on Israeli soil in October 2023, with the killing of over 1,200 Israelis living nearby (keep in mind, though, that 300 of those were Israeli soldiers and that dozens of Israeli citizens were killed by the IDF as they had orders to use all means possible to avoid the taking of hostages) and the kidnapping of over 250 hostages, touched a deep nerve in the Israeli psyche. My wife and I learned something important in our three years in the West Bank. Foreigners who had lived for a good while in Israel told us that Israelis had founded their nation in the shadow of the Holocaust, and that their founding motto was “Never again!” That understandable cri du coeur—a vow born of trauma—goes a long way to explain, I believe, Israel’s violent and oppressive treatment of the Palestinians in their midst.
In the 1990s and up to maybe 2007, a majority of Israelis were in favor of some version of a two-state solution. Israel had an active and committed peace movement in those days. Since Hamas took over Gaza in 2007 and, starting with the four “little wars” (2008, 2012, 2014, 2021) that killed 4-5000 Gazans, and then leading to the present war, that deep-seated trauma in the Israeli soul has been reactivated. The peace movement dwindled considerably since then.
The current Netanyahu far-right government represents the most radical elements of the Israeli political spectrum. The finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, in a speech to the Israeli Knesset in 2021, told the Palestinian members present, “You’re here by mistake, it’s a mistake that Ben-Gurion [founding father of Israel] didn’t finish the job and throw you out in 1948.”
Yet there is hope. On July 23rd, thousands of Israelis, many of them carrying sacks of flour, marched through Tel Aviv “bearing placards with inscriptions like ‘Starvation is a War Crime.” That the peace movement is starting to stir again can only be a good sign. May it spread!
Especially as follower of Jesus, who believes in the redemptive power of his cross and resurrection, I can pray with faith for healing and peace, not just for individuals, but also for wounded nations and peoples. The cycle of violence and abuse can be broken. Let’s not give in to despair, but work together for peace—for both nations.