Draft 6 (Jerusalem – Melbourne 7th August
2006)
UNCONDITIONAL HATE
(Part 2)
Natan Kellermann
& George Halasz
We
love without reason, and without reason we hate.
Jean
François Regnard (1704)
A bomb
explodes in the middle of a large crowd in Israel, killing and wounding dozens
of people. It’s another attempt by a Palestinian suicide terrorist to kill as
many Israelis as possible and to create fear in the general population. The act
is premeditated murder, committed by a person who finds his own life less
important than his violent mission. His hate has reached beyond reason, and
cannot be negotiated by rational means. If asked, he would say: “We must kill the Zionist Jew at all cost. Not
because what they do, but because who they are!”
Can ’rational motives’ fully explain this murderous
behavior?
Such a primitive and uncompromising hate of Jews have
deeper roots in ancient history and it is still present in various degree all
over the world. In the past, Jew-hatred was defined and confined to ‘classical’
anti-Semitism. Today it also includes everything connected to Israel, Zionism
and Jews in or out of Israel. While the former hate climaxed in the Nazi
Holocaust’s attempt at total annihilation of the Jewish people, the recent
‘new’ anti-Semitism (Halasz 2006) may lead to ‘wiping Israel off the map’ as
declared by Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Our first
paper on unconditional hate (Halasz & Kellermann, 2005) suggested that much
of the extreme expression of anti-Semitism from the past could be designated as
‘unconditional hate’ (UH). UH was simply defined as hate
‘in itself’ or hate without logic and rational cause. [Note 1]. In this
second part, we will expand on these formulations, and exemplify the
manifestations of UH with the modus operandi and offer some theories of suicide
terrorists. We further would like to suggest some theories of hate which try to
explain what makes suicide bombers ‘tick’. In doing this, we
will explore the psychological infrastructure of emotions that lie at the basic
of the ‘new’ anti-Semite’s mental make-up.
First we provide links between this mind-set and the
acts of suicide murders. Then, we extend aspects of the mentality of Nazi mass
murderers motivated by unconditional hatred to uncover a nauseating truth about
the evolution of unchallenged hate. And finally, we suggest that 60 years
later, a similar cycle of unconditional hate is spiraling out of control,
supporting the thesis that Jihadism and anti-Semitism are interconnected, and
posing immminent
and deadly threat.
Unditional haters find what they hate physically
repulsive and disgusting. It may be likened to the homeophobes spontaneous
aversion response when encountering a homesexual person, or the nausea of the
vegeterian being invited to eat meat. UH is the direct contraposition of
unconditional love that parents normally feel for their children, in which they
would say: “I love them no matter what!” When the object of such
negative sentiments are Jews, it leads to the development of an anti-Semitic
disposition.
The biography of Adolf Hitler may illustrate the
development of such a pervasive and perverse anti-Semitic disposition. While
there are many different ways of interpreting Hitler attitudes (Rosenbaum,
1998), some historians explain that his hatred of Jews developed around
1908-1910 after he had been rejected by the Vienna Academy of Art. He was convinced that it was a
Jewish professor that had rejected his artwork; he became convinced that a
Jewish doctor had been responsible for his mother’s death; he experienced envy
through his menial work of clearing the snow-bound paths of beautiful town
houses in Vienna where rich people lived and he became convinced that only Jews
lived in these homes. As a result of these experiences, his hatred of the Jews
developed and became entrenched in a very personal anti-Semitic conviction.
This
development was described in his book “Mein Kampf”, where he referred to the
hardship and misery in Vienna as entirely the fault of the Jews, and he wrote:
“I began to hate them.” A few years later, however, after having fought bravely
in the First World War, he was promoted to corporal and decorated with both the
Iron Cross Second Class and First Class by a Jewish captain. This positive
experience with a Jewish person, however, did not alter his negative attitude
to the Jews. By then, there was apparently nothing that could have changed his
negative attitudes towards Jews, which seems to have developed by then into
‘unconditional hatred.’ This culminated in the Holocaust.
In the world of today, ‘new’ anti-Semitism preaches hatred, not only against
Jews, but also against Israel. During 2003,
there were a series of books and papers published on this ‘new’ phenomenon by
Chesler, Foxman, Greenspan, Iaganski & Kosmin, Prager & Telushkin and
Schoenfeld. While the most intense hatred certainly comes from the Arab
World and Islam, this “new” anti-Semitism is also spreading rapidly in Europe.
In recent opinion polls, the general populations of France, England, Holland
and many countries of Eastern Europe have clearly expressed their negative
sentiments against Israelis, and Jews in general. For example, Israel was
perceived as the greatest threat to world peace by a majority of European
countries in a recent EU study. In addition, the European Union in itself has
clearly been biased in its treatment of the Middle East conflict, seeing Israel
as the villain and Palestine as the victim of oppression.
A strange mixture of people and organizations are involved in this
“new” anti-Semitism.
They do not only come from the pro-Palestinian camp and from Islam, but also
from the radical left and extreme right. Radical leftist groups who protest
against the US colonialism, globalization, and the Western capitalist
civilization in general have joined up with extreme rightist groups of
neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers, skinhead activists, racists and xenophobes who
all share the common bond of Jew hatred. These “new” anti-Semites make no
differentiation between Jews in general and Israelis
in particular. For them, Jews and Israelis all represent the ultimate
Zionist evil, which should be destroyed at all cost.
The
fanatic pro-Palestinian terrorist camp certainly does not make any distinctions
between Zionists and anti-Zionists or between the right and the left in Israel.
People from all such political fractions travel in buses and they are all are
exposed to the same threat of being blown up. What is most surprising, however,
is that such terrorists also attack Jewish institutions outside Israel who one
would think would comply with their vision of a Palestine without Jews. This
non-differentiation between hating Jews in Israel (either in central Israel or
in the occupied territories), or Jews who live outside Israel, is a critical
criteria for the blurring of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism among such people.
Such hate seem to include all the criteria of anti-Semitism that was described
by Sharansky, including demonisation, discrimination with double standards and
the denial of the right of Israel to exist.
Thus, the difference between a leftist pro-Palestinian activist,
who wants to get rid of the Jews in Israel, and a neo-Nazi, who wants to get
rid of the Jews everywhere else, is purely academic. Both think that Jews should be deprived of certain
rights, be kept out of certain economic, social and political positions, be
expelled from their country, and, finally, be eliminated. Such views have deep roots in the “classical” hatred of
Jews that has been the destiny of the Chosen People for centuries.
Hate Crimes and Terrorism
The distinguished researcher on anti-Semitism Poliakov
(1965) wrote: "Those who don't denounce anti-Semitism in its primitive and
elementary form just because it is so primitive and elemental will have to put
up with being questioned about whether or not they are giving secret approval
to anti-Semites all over the world just because of that."
What is this ‘primitive and elementary form’ of
anti-Semitism that Poliakov warns against?
Matthias Küntzel (2003) offered a unique
insight into the mindset of 9/11 suicide murders. He noted that Shahid Nickels,
a member of the core group of perpetrators, said of ringleader Mohamed “Atta’s
weltanschauung… that ‘the Jews’ are determined to achieve world domination. He
considered New York City to be the center of World Jewry which was, in his
opinion, Enemy Number One.” Ahmed Maglad, another witness testified: “For us,
Israel didn’t have any right to exist as a state…”
Daniels (2005) brings a psychiatric perspective and
provides a powerful psycho-socio-cultural analysis of the British Moslem
suicide bombers. At the core of the young Muslim’s dissatisfaction in Britain,
are the shared and well-known patterns under the label of ‘social injustice’
discrimination and the identity crisis faced by children of immigrants.
The essential difference between the three groups of
young men was that only the Moslem group perverted their religious teaching in
what may be described as ‘spiritualizing serious mental illness’. Daniels
provides evidence from the French Iranian researcher Farhad Khosrokhavar whose
interviews of 15 French Muslim ‘prisoners convicted of planning terrorist acts’
noted that some had been converted to ‘the terrorist outlook by a single
insulting remark, for example when one of their sisters was called a ‘dirty
Arab’”. A psychological profile of such would-be suicide murderer would qualify
as a delusional conversion, a spiritualizing of psychopathology. Such minds are
so fragile that they turn one event into a justification to transform their
life values. Their brittle sense of identity, tend to melt down when confronted
with shame or humiliation. Infantile rage follows, seen regularly as a well-known
phenomenon in the consulting room of most mental health professionals.
Such pathological narcissistic structure, rather that
being on a noble spiritually enlightened level is, in reality, highly
vulnerable to seduction by magical solutions to life’s serious challenges.
Classically, such minds evacuate the very mental faculties needed to engage
with reality testing. This may be a tragic outcome for the individual when
immersed in a culture of clerics who preach hatred of the world. In short, the solution
for their inner hate is directed outwards, even if the objects are innocent
people. Thus, destruction on apocalyptic scales on the world stage becomes the
magical solution to deep-seated emotional problems.
Daniels (2005) concluded with the clinical observation
that ‘Of course, hatred is the underlying emotion. A man in prison who told me
that he wanted to be a suicide bomber was more hate-filled than any man I have
ever met’.
This brief background into the state of mind of
‘terrorists’ has a chilling deja vue quality. German declarations over 60 years
ago were ignored then as they are now. But the similarities of the
justifications and mentality of Rudolf Höss and those of today’s terrorists are
striking.
Against the reality of such documented facts, we can be
accused of negligence if we do not respond to the current escalation of
anti-Semitism. How should we respond? As a start probing questions must be
asked. Who is responsible for such crimes? Should new international laws be
legislated? What measures must be taken to prevent its escalation to
unconditional hate? What actions demand immediate self-protective actions? If
such states of mind are observed in national leaders, what should be the
responsibility of the world to stop them?
Hate: Rational
or Irrational and Unconditional?
Many
writers have alluded to extreme forms of hate. One of the better-known writers
is Erich Fromm (1973) who suggested a theory, which makes a distinction between
“rational” and "irrational" hatred (of Jews and others). Rational
hatred would develop as a reaction to vital threats and ceases to exist when
the threat has been removed. Such hate is expressed
in reaction to a threat to one’s own freedom, life or ideas. It has a
biological self-protecting function. Irrational and unconditional hate,
however, is not a reaction to a specific threat, but a character trait inherent
in some people. Such people are readily hostile to others and they seek a
target to attack and destroy. Racist mobs and terrorist groups may enact a
strong impulse to cruelty and hostility towards others.
One of
the repeated issues of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians concern this
basic distinction between the rational and irrational hatred. Both Palestinians
and Israelis seem to accuse the other party for irrational hate while
describing their own aggression as a response to the violence of the other, be
it to the occupation of the Israelis, or the terrorist bombings of the
Palestinians. It is therefore important to further explain the differences
between the two forms of hate.
The
conflict between Israelis and Palestinians may be variously explained as being
based on (1) the real incompatibility of goals that lead to inter-group
competition, (2) as differences in social identity, and as (3) being based on
mutual projection of negative images (Volkan, 1997). None of the above theories, however, can sufficiently explain the
unconditional hatred as manifested in the behavior of suicide bomber. Because
while there clearly is a conflict of interest between the Israelis and the
Palestinians, there has always been willingness for compromise on the Israeli
side while the Palestinians have continued to spread their hate propaganda
uninterrupted ever since the existence of the Jewish state. Among the
innumerable examples highlighted by Marcus & Crook, in their ‘Palestinian
Media Watch’, Israel is consistently depicted as ‘the Zionist enemy which
has no right to exist’ by its Arab neighbors. (Note 2)
Some
studies have recognized patterns of distinct psychopathology and/or
psychopathic traits in the person with unconditional hatred. An example is
Gaylin (2003) who suggests a psychological analysis of hatred and who comes to
the conclusion that ‘hate-driven people live in the distorted world of their
own perception” (p. 240). Such an analysis of ‘true hate’ seems to be similar
to our own definition of UH in that it portrays the person with such a state of
mind as psychologically disturbed. In addition, it seems to reflect some of the
early formulations of Adorno and Horkheimer of the Frankfurt School of the
‘authoritarian personality’ and in particular of ‘instinctual hate.’
Other psychoanalytical interpretations of the motives of
terrorists are plentiful. For example, Akhtar quotes Volkan (1997) who posited
the intense hatred of the terrorist as a way to regain his own and his people’s
honor, after having been victimized and humuliated by the oppressor. It is our
view that such interpretations, while being highly plausible, are insufficient
to explain the scope, persistence and intensitity of UH.
Oppression, humiliation and victimization does not always
lead to such acts of cruelty, as we are readily aware when studying various
survivors of torture, abuse and genocide in the psychological trauma literature.
After a period of suffering, many such survivors, including most survivors of
the Holocaust, rather become more compassionate than full of vengeance, and
channel their feelings of resentment into constructive, rather than destructive
goals. In contrast, the terrorists and various anti-Semitic groups remain full
of uncompromising, unforgiving and unrelentless hate, that later becomes the
source for merciless malevolence.
This point reflects a major difference between the oppressor and the
oppressed. The first one, (the anti-Semite) refuses to admit to any
deficiencies in themselves, and blame those on others, while the second one
(the Jews) readily acknowledge their own deficiencies, and ask what they could
do differently in order to be more accepted.
Contrary
to popular opinion, some Jews take this criticism seriously and do not a priori
consider themselves as blameless targets of irrational hatred. As evidenced by
the numerous Jewish leftist organizations, who criticize all elements of Jewish
and Israeli society from within and from without, there is no lack of
self-criticisms in our quarters.
An effort to adapt and change has been the traditional
agenda of Jewish assimilation for centuries. Thus Jews have repeatedly asked
what they could do to arouse less hatred with the hope that if they would honestly confront the
‘rational’ reasons for why they are so hated, and be able to change what they do,
the result would be that they would be more liked. For example, if they would
be able to fully integrate into the local societies and nations in which they
live, they would be seen less as strangers and foreigners. Or, if they would
create a state of their own which was based on peace, equality and justice,
they would be more accepted worldwide. Well, if this was the case,
and if Jews would only be able to change their ‘mischievous’ behavior, they
would be less hated.
This
conception of a ‘rational’ reason for the hatred of Jews doesn’t account for
the full story. Because we Jews have been the worst of capitalists and the
worst of socialists; extreme pacifists and fanatic militants; we have been
loyal to the state and the world, and also revolutionaries and freedom
fighters. Jews have been unorthodox and free-thinkers in religion; progressives
and internationalists in politics; socialistically inclined in economics;
liberal in regard sexual matters and in the arousal of freedom in education
while there are also plenty of Jews who tend to the opposite views in all these
fields. Thus we can easily observe how the various rational religious,
political, economic, criminological and educational causes of anti-Semitism all
fail to have explained its source adequately.
In the
state of Israel, in the post withdrawal from Lebanon and Gaza, there is also a
distinct feeling that whatever government policy, the terrorists continue with
their unconditional hate.
Even if we would give up the ‘occupation’ of Judea and
Samaria (West Bank), and even if we would let all Palestinian refugees return,
they would continue to hate us. The hate of Israelis and Jews has been too consistent
throughout the years despite all efforts.
Suppose
we were to collude and acknowledge the ‘evil nature’ of our own behavior as the
reason for their hate? Whatever we do, they say, will express our very basic
“Jewishness”. And this might be the point, because our Jewishness is exactly
what the anti-Semite cannot stand. It is the hate-in-itself that the concept of
unconditional hate tries to convey. All the other ‘rational reasons’
seem to be just pretexts, empty excuses and some forms of rationalizations.
So what
does this ‘Jewishness’ mean? Freud (1930) tried to answer this question in a
psychological and succinct manner: Emphasizing that he was “completely
estranged from the religion of his fathers and who cannot take a share in
nationalist ideals [of Israel], but who has yet never repudiated his people,
who feels that he is in his essential nature a Jew and who has no desire to
alter that nature. If the question were put to him: ‘Since you have abandoned
all these common characteristics of your countrymen, what is there left to you
that is Jewish?’ he would reply: ‘A very great deal, and probably its very
essence.’” (p. xv). But he failed to define this essence.
Conclusion
This paper offers our original conceptual research on
unconditional hate. The
claim that hate in anti-Semitism is based on the perception of what Jews do
might have some truth. But the point we make is precisely that no matter what
Jews do, the hate persists. This condition is what we define as unconditional
hate. Currently, much theory is being
recycled and elaborated upon when explaining suicide bombers and new
anti-Semitism. Our hope is that this new concept will brake the old theoretical
cycle and open up a new path to empirical research.
We have offered a tentative model of the evolution of
unconditional hate in the context of the contemporary Middle East
politics. This hate evolves from
simple prejudice, through increasingly violent levels of aggression to the full-blown
extreme pathological state of unconditional hate. Since we see so many
manifestations of this condition today, the various new threats should be taken
seriously. A first and important step is the combined effort of new
legislation, extending and enforcing the hate crime laws that came into effect
in the US in the last decades of the 20th century. In addition, preventive
measures need to be taken by teaching tolerance to combat this lethal
condition.
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Note 1.
The
general question of rationality in human behavior seems to be part of our
present-day ‘Zeitgeist.’ The two recent Nobel-laureates who received the Bank
of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences for having ‘integrated’ insights from
psychological research and human judgment into economic science may illustrate
this. The first one, Daniel Kahneman (2002) stated that rationality cannot be
assumed, while the second Robert Aumann (2005) based his theories on the basic
rationality of human beings. Since both utilize a
psychological approach to explaining (non-rational) behavior, we believe that
their points of view have a certain relevance to our discussion from a meta-psychological
perspective.
Note 2.
A good
example of how two sites (both called PMW) cover the same Middle East conflict
from two opposite perspectives:
1. The
Palestinian Media Watch (established in 1996) <http://www.pmw.org.il>
Aims to
"monitoring of the Palestinian Arabic (anti-zionist) language media and
schoolbooks"
2. The
Palestine Media Watch (established in 2000)
<http://www.pmwatch.org/pmw/index.asp>
Aims to
promote coverage of the Israeli occupation of Palestine in the US mainstream
media.