Reposting the 2018 Introduction to Beyond Tribal Loyalties

I could have written it today

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I am re-posting here the updated Introduction to the 2018 2nd edition of my edited book Beyond Tribal Loyalties. I already posted it in October last year. But I want to draw attention to it again. It contains a dire warning about Israel’s real intentions about the Palestinian people. Feel free to share this piece widely for the benefit of those who are still ‘confused’, and who still struggle to believe that Israel is as criminally insane as its actions prove it to be.

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Introduction to the 2018 Edition

It is hard to believe but Beyond Tribal Loyalties has been out now for six years. The publication of a second edition offers me an opportunity to write a new, more up-to-date introduction.

I wish I could say that things are better in Palestine compared with how they were back in 2012, when the paperback edition was first published. Unfortunately, things are not only not better, they are far worse for the Palestinian people.

The recent brutal Israeli attack on unarmed and peaceful Palestinian protesters in Gaza, the targeted shootings of twenty-nine medics, killing two, while they were treating wounded on the ground, the use of snipers to shoot down protesters including children, as if on a hunting spree, are the latest examples of how settler-colonialism handles even peaceful resistance.

100% of Gaza’s children and probably most of the adults there suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress. Almost two million people are trapped in the largest open-air prison on the planet living in hellish conditions without any hope of release, under an illegal Israeli siege. Although Israel ‘withdrew’ from Gaza it still controls directly and indirectly what every individual there does, how much and what they eat, their access to education and work, their ability to travel, their access to medical care and whether or not they have building materials, clean water, sanitation or electricity.

Daily injustices continue, incarceration without trial, incarceration and abuse of Palestinian children, including but not limited to keeping children in adult prisons and preventing their families from seeing them. There are recurring cruel and senseless crimes against Palestinians that can only be described as psychopathic. They are committed both by colonisers (aka settlers) who go unpunished, and by Israeli forces. These stories rarely make it to mainstream news.

The infiltration of Palestinian society by Israeli secret agents is common practice.¹ The job of these agents is to sabotage community relationships and break down Palestinian society from within, all in the service of weakening resistance and ultimately eliminating a people.

The ‘shoot first ask questions later’ policy, and Israeli racism demonstrate how little Palestinian lives matter to Israel.

Israel continues to enact laws and implement policies that marginalise the Palestinians a little bit at a time, thus making it easier some day to remove them completely, one way or another. Ilan Pappé calls what Israel does to the Palestinians an ‘incremental genocide’. If we take a step back from the intentionally complex picture Israel tries to paint for us, we can all see that this is indeed what it is.

Israeli settler-colonialism in Palestine is progressing largely unchallenged by those who have the power to stop it. If it were not for the persistent work of grassroots groups, the Palestinians would have been all but forgotten by now. Although the situation on the ground in ever shrinking Palestine is worse than it was six years ago, the biggest success of grassroots protest is in not allowing the topic of Palestine to disappear from public awareness.

The Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, alternative news outlets like Mondoweiss, The Electronic Intifada, Middle East Monitor (MEMO) and others, independent journalists and activists like Jonathan Cook, and dedicated historians like Ilan Pappé are all ensuring that the Palestinian cause remains on the world’s agenda. Anti- Zionists and BDS supporters from within Israel are making an invaluable contribution. Despite being a small minority, they lend their voice from within to Palestinian resistance, and to the larger context of opposition to Israeli settler-colonialism.

Occasionally, mainstream newspapers publish articles that are sympathetic to the Palestinians. But even the most sympathetic writers get caught up in what I call the Israeli ‘language trap’. They continue to use words like ‘conflict’, ‘peace’, ‘war’, or ‘negotiations’, implying false symmetry between Israel and the Palestinians.

Many writers in mainstream media outlets still insist on ‘balance’ in their reporting and make a big point of representing ‘both sides of the story’. While in principle neutrality and balance are expressions of thoughtfulness, reason and calmness, they are only appropriate where there is equality of power. When applied in situations where there is an inherent imbalance of power, neutrality and balance become active enablers of an abusive system. It is appropriate and necessary to remain unbiased when dealing with two sides with equal power, whether they are a couple attending relationship therapy at my practice, or two organisations or countries who have a dispute.

Where there is an imbalance of power, maintaining a ‘neutral’ or ‘balanced’ position is harmful to the less powerful side.² In the field of psychotherapy, we do not engage in relationship therapy if there is an imbalance of power manifesting, for example, in violence or coercive control by one side³ against the other. Our priority is always to dismantle the power structure and protect the victims.

A ‘balanced’ position enables toxic and abusive power structures to continue. This not only abandons and harms victims, it also gives permission to perpetrators to continue to abuse. This is precisely what a ‘balanced’ position on Palestine is doing.

There is no ‘other side to the story’ in settler-colonialism, just like there is no ‘other side’ to the story in slavery, racism, discrimination, or child abuse. A long time ago we stopped debating with those who oppose women’s equality, or women’s right to vote. It would be preposterous and possibly even criminal in some countries to suggest that child molesters have a valid point of view, that slavery is useful to our economy, or that Hitler’s genocidal racial ideology had merit. But settler-colonialism in Palestine is exempt.

I am yet to see one mainstream newspaper that is prepared to call a spade a spade, and name Israeli setter-colonialism for what it is. Settler- colonialism is a crime against humanity, and it needs to be acknowledged and named as such. When dealing with a crime, our focus must be on the crime not on identities. Jewish Israelis, the perpetrators of settler-colonialism, do not deserve special treatment or consideration for any reason. Neither do the Palestinian people, the victims of Israeli settler-colonialism, deserve to be seen as lesser victims. A crime is a crime.

As in all historical cases of settler-colonialism, it is the settler- colonisers who usually have the advantage. They have more advanced weaponry, and they mobilise all of their resources to achieve their goal.

They also control the narrative, what is discussed, how much is discussed, and what is permissible or not permissible to say.

Settler-colonisers have always done everything in their power to obscure the reality of settler-colonialism and its inherent crimes, and to dehumanise and demonise their victims. Israeli settler-colonialism is not original, and is no different. According the late Australian scholar Patrick Wolfe, settle-colonisers engage in a ‘policy of elimination’⁴ of the native populations they aim to replace. The Palestinians have always known they are the victims of settler-colonialism. They know they are being slowly eliminated and replaced. They have been crying out for help for decades, but those in positions of power are not listening.

Elimination is not just physical. For a settler-colonial movement to succeed, it has to ensure that there is no resistance. Successful resistance would mean failure for the settler-coloniser. Resistance is not just armed resistance. As long as a colonised people hold on to their identity, their culture, language, cuisine, art, their memory, and their dignity they are a threat to the colonisers. It has therefore always been part of colonial and settler-colonial powers to do everything possible to damage the very spirit and humanity of their victims. Colonisers and settler-colonisers have traditionally portrayed their victims as ‘primitives’, ‘inferior’, ‘terrorists’, ‘murderers’, ‘bad’, even non-humans who do not deserve sympathy from anyone, and who do not have a right to exist. This is helpful if you want to get the support of others for the crime you are committing, and to enable your own people to obey orders without questioning them.

One of the most successful tools used by Israel and its supporters to silence opposition and weaken support for the Palestinians is to equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism. This has been an effective way of silencing criticism, and paralysing and disempowering protesters. During my seventeen years of activism, I have witnessed this cynical Israeli tactic become increasingly more effective. We all saw its impact on the British Labour Party in recent times.

With varying degrees of success, Israel has been attempting to use its political influence to manipulate the legal systems in Western democracies into criminalising criticism of Israel and the BDS under existing racial vilification laws. Antisemitism as a form of racial vilification is already criminalised in a number of countries. If you can legally equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism, then criticising the state of Israel, and supporting the BDS automatically become crimes. Israel would like to argue that if you disagree with the right of Israel to exist as an exclusively Jewish state at the expense of the indigenous people, you are effectively calling for the destruction of all Jewish people everywhere. Israel is trying to shift the focus from legitimate objection to settler- colonialism, to illegitimate racism against Jews.

This is one of the many mechanisms Israel uses to try to smooth its path to completing its settler-colonial project in Palestine, and the elimination of the Palestinian people. It is unprecedented that criticism of a state’s policies should be seen as racism. This must be opposed not only because it is false. It must be opposed because it constitutes interference in the democratic process in other countries and the right, duty and freedom of citizens of democratic societies to protest against human rights violations, and crimes against humanity committed by anyone.

Equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism doesn’t just harm the Palestinian cause, it also trivialises the meaning of real antisemitism, which is a form of racism directed specifically against Jews. But Israel does not care much if the word ‘antisemitism’ loses its meaning. From Israeli perspective, the end justifies the means.

In the eyes of Jewish Israelis, Jews are the ultimate victims and the most important victims that have ever existed in human history. Jewish culture is based on an identity of persecution, and a belief that Jews are never safe among non-Jews. Mainstream Jewish culture shares a belief that Jews can only be safe with other Jews, and that it is the duty of all Jews to do whatever is necessary to preserve the Jewish people.⁵ Growing up in Israel, I learned that the only thing standing between me and annihilation is the state of Israel. It therefore followed that if I wanted to survive, I would have to dedicate my life to protecting the Jewish state, no matter the cost. I was raised to believe that the survival of our own people is more important than anything, including universal human values, and our personal sense of purpose.

Despite the blatant imbalance of power between the Israeli state and the Palestinian people, most Israeli Jews still believe that they are just fighting for their own survival against a dangerous annihilator. This victimhood complex has always been embedded in Jewish culture. I grew up with it, and it kind of makes sense when you are on the inside and are brought up only on the narrow and blinkered version of history Israel teaches.

Those in Israel who could be sympathetic to the suffering of the Palestinians are easily overpowered and silenced, because they too believe this narrative of eternal Jewish victimhood. Jewish victimhood is the central pillar of Jewish identity Israel-style, and it is an unspoken social taboo to question it.⁶

Israel’s unique take on demonising the indigenous people it is seeking to replace fits well within traditional Israeli Jewish narrative. Israel has succeeded in portraying the Palestinians not as victims of a settler-colonial state who are fighting for their survival, but as enemies of the Jewish people. In Jewish Israeli eyes the Palestinian people are just the latest in a long list of groups who have been hell-bent on annihilating the Jewish people for their own reasons.⁷ Until people grasp this, they cannot properly understand what is going on in Palestine, and what Israel is doing there.

Only when you come out of the fog of insular Jewish Israeli brainwashing and gain a broader perspective, you begin to see how flawed and out of touch with reality this way of thinking is. I have long been equating Jewish Israeli culture to a cult, precisely because of its insular view of the world, and the requirement that individuals relinquish their unique identity and replace it with group identity. Although questioning or criticising Jewish Israeli mindset and policies are not formally punishable in Israel – at least not for Jews – there is a great deal of effective informal pressure on people to conform and self- censor.⁸

As a psychotherapist I have worked with many cult survivors over the years. I can see many similarities between the Zionist belief system and a cult. One of the most obvious similarities lies in the process of leaving or trying to leave Zionism. Leaving cults is always psychologically complex and incredibly difficult, and leaving Zionism is no different. The stories in this book are largely about the process of leaving the Zionist cult, what it is like to do this, and the challenges and opposition you face when you try to leave.

Since the original publication of this book, many have joined the ranks of ‘cult leavers’, and it has been suggested that I consider putting together a second volume of stories. Having met so many new courageous people over the past six years who have been on this journey, I might be tempted.

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The machinery of Zionist Israeli settler-colonialism ultimately intends to replace the entire Palestinian population with Jews on all the land of historic Palestine. Israel is on track to complete its plan with considerable military, political and financial backing from countries like the US, UK, Germany and others. Many countries support Israel in spirit, or at least do not offer any significant opposition to Israeli settler- colonialism, except for the occasional and toothless ‘condemnation’ of events that are usually perceived in isolation. The grassroots campaign continues to bite and annoy Israel, but we are still a long way away from official support for the BDS from our governments.

This universal support for Israel is a de-facto endorsement of settler- colonialism and is therefore collusion with a crime against humanity. This should be impossible in a ‘post-colonial’ world. Sanctions against Israel should be a no-brainer in societies that routinely talk about democracy, freedom, equality and human rights.

Post-colonial lessons and reflections are indeed common in progressive scholarly circles. But the world is largely run by colonial and imperialistic interests, complete with the belief that there are worthy and less worthy humans.

Present day political and economic imperialism are often accompanied by military might as evident in the foreign policies of countries like the US and the UK, and the propaganda they use to justify their actions. For example, the US presented its invasion of Iraq ostensibly as a way to deal with the risks of weapons of mass destruction. But in truth, the US-led invasion, which caused the destruction of a country, the deaths of around half a million people and well over four thousand US soldiers⁹ was a cynical means to increase the influence and control of US energy interests in the region.

While this goes on, who is going to stand up to Israel? To take Israel to task, current imperialist countries would have to acknowledge and abandon their imperialistic ambitions and policies. Israel has never had it so easy and so good and that is because the rest of the world, or at least the significant world powers are not behaving any better. The fact that official sanctions, or any real attempt to stop Israel’s relentless march to complete its settler-colonial project seem so impossible, exposes our global climate of hypocrisy and double standards. It also highlights the gross discrepancy between the laws we have inside our societies, and the rules we live by internationally.

The closest internal equivalent of settler-colonialism would probably be a home invasion. In Western societies there is no question whose side the law is on, and who it protects. Our laws would not tolerate it if one person invaded the home of another and attempted to replace the inhabitants with their own family, no matter what reasons or justifications they would cite. In Palestine we not only tolerate it, our own governments actively enable this home invasion and everything that goes with it.

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When I started to work on the first edition of this book, the idea that Jewish people could stand up to Israel, challenge its policies and support the Palestinians was still something of a novelty. This is no longer the case. More Jews than ever before question the expectation of an automatic obligation to support Israel ‘right or wrong’, and the idea that their very identity is tied with Israel’s fate. However, despite this increase in pro-Palestinian activism in Jewish circles, there is still significant Jewish support for Israel around the world.

Israeli Jews and supporters of Israel often demand that I justify myself for my activism. But it is not I, or people like me who need to justify ourselves. I believe that it is Jews and non-Jews who support settler-colonialism in Palestine who have a duty to explain why they support it. You cannot be a nice person in one area of your life, profess to believe in social justice, peace, and fairness on one hand, and at the same time support the idea that one group of people has more right to exist or survive than another. Those who support Israel are the ones who owe the Palestinians an explanation and an apology.

The Jews who begin to see the reality of Israel for what it is, still have to wrestle with issues of identity, fear of antisemitism, and tribal affiliation. I have always hoped that this book would offer support and inspiration to those who are just starting on this difficult journey.

If any good comes out of the existence of Israel, is that its increasingly visible unfolding settler-colonial agenda is likely to lead to a crisis in Jewish identity. I have no doubt that there are already the beginnings of a re-evaluation, and a re-thinking of what being Jewish means. Seeing your own people as a perpetrator, and not as history’s biggest victim is a major shift, likely to lead to a psychological crisis. Learning not to live in fear of antisemitism, that mythical, almost supernatural monster that is such a central part of Jewish identity, requires recovery from the elements of trauma embedded in Jewishness.

It is a big journey that will take time; time the Palestinians do not have! What we all have to focus on as a matter of urgency, is changing the power imbalance, and not enabling Israeli settler-colonialism. Jews who are still on their psychological/spiritual journey, can deal with their identity crisis and psychological problems later.

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I have left all the stories in this book as they are. They are valuable as they are, and have in themselves become part of history. Sadly, we lost Margot Salom in 2016. But her powerful voice carries on through her story and her other writings. Her courage and passion, and the legacy of her activism for justice live on.

What has changed in me in the past six years, apart from just growing older, is that I see myself more than ever before as a member of the human species, rather than a member of a particular group. We all need to move beyond our tribal loyalties. Our existence and survival as a species depends, now more than ever, on cooperation, not on isolationism or a competitive, ghetto mentality. Even more so, if we want more for ourselves than just survival, if we want to develop and see what is possible for us, if we want to fulfil our potential, we cannot continue with our short-sighted and narrow-minded tribalism. It simply gets in the way and keeps us in a self-inflicted, and completely unnecessary and preventable permanent state of war. The narratives and testimonies in this book are examples of the personal process of moving from a narrow definition of identity to a broader and more compassionate one; a human identity that embraces the entirety of our species.

I do not have good news. Our politicians and elected leaders do not have the courage, vision, or compassion needed to do the right thing and fix a suffering world, despite the fact that most of our suffering is human-made and avoidable. It is therefore up to each one of us to continue to cooperate, provide leadership, courage, a non-adversarial model of activism, cooperation, openness, compassion. We must insist on being heard. We cannot wait for our political ‘mummies’ and ‘daddies’ to know what’s best for us, and tell us what to do or what to think. They do not necessarily represent the best of us, and they have no idea what they are doing.

We do not have to like everyone, we just have to realise we are all members of the same species, and that it is up to us to transform this world if we want to thrive rather than just survive and increase our numbers.

Defeating Israeli settler-colonialism will not only be liberating for the Palestinians, it will also symbolise our refusal to accept the law of the jungle that currently drives our world.

Avigail Abarbanel

Scottish Highlands,

June 2018

1. I strongly recommend the film ‘Omar’. It depicts accurately how Israel operates in the Occupied and Colonised West Bank.

2. As Desmond Tutu said: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

3. Violence and coercive control in personal relationships are criminal offences in the UK.

4. Patrick Wolfe (2006) Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native, Journal of Genocide Research, 8:4, 387-409. Published online: 21 Dec 2006 (The full article is available online).

5. The definition of what constitutes Jewishness is a complex topic that deserves separate discussion. It’s important to realise though that Israel has adopted a racial, blood definition of Jewishness. The idea of Jewishness as a race was adopted by Hitler and the Nazis and it fitted well within their race (pseudo) science. In Israel any person is considered Jewish if their mother is Jewish regardless of whether they follow Jewish religion or identify themselves as Jewish in any way. How the mother is identified as Jewish is because her mother was Jewish and so it goes on. Records of Jewish religious populations that traditionally avoided marrying out became the basis for identifying Jewish people and that has become confused with a Jewish ‘race’. This racial definition allows Israel to ‘speak’ for people who do not have any affiliation to the Jewish state, and who do not agree with Zionism. Israel wants to be a ‘national home’ for all those Israel considers to be Jewish regardless of where they live or how they see themselves.

6. I am not talking here about Holocaust denial. The Holocaust was a horrific attempt to annihilate all of Europe’s Jews in the Twentieth Century using the machinery of a modern state. The Nazi regime murdered, displaced and scarred millions of Jews. The devastating impact of the Holocaust reverberated for generations. I’m talking about the perception that Jews are always victims. Israeli Jews believe that the Holocaust isn’t over, and that without the state of Israel it is only a matter of time before someone carries out another attempt to annihilate the Jewish people. Sadly, the lessons Israel learns from Jewish persecution and the ones it teaches its citizens are inward looking. They are not generalised to include all human beings. Israeli Jews believe in ‘never again for us’, not necessarily in ‘never again for anyone’.

7. 12 See Peter Slezak’s story for an example of this in the Jewish Passover liturgy.

8. 13 See my Mondoweiss article, ‘Why I left the cult’ at http://mondoweiss.net/2016/10/why-i-left-the-cult/ See also Gideon Levy’s testimony at: http://mondoweiss.net/2018/03/gideon-question-crushed/

9. The number of deaths caused by the invasion of Iraq is still debated, which in itself should worry us. How can we not know how many died or were otherwise harmed unless we don’t really care...? (See: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/15/iraq-death- toll_n_4102855.html?guccounter=1)