‘You made me do it’ Jacqueline Rose on violence and its origins
JVL Introduction
Jacqueline Rose asks difficult questions.
Why do so many who support the Palestinian cause find it hard to spare a thought for the anguish of those attacked by Hamas? Or why is trying to understand Hamas as part of a resistance movement against occupation dismissed as an abandonment of moral judgment?
She asks “How, then, to make a reckoning between the people whose most traumatic moment is the industrial genocide of the Jews in Nazi Germany, and those for whom the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948 in order to create the state of Israel is where the injustice begins?”
And answers: “It is, of course, a false choice.”
The one thing she is clear on is that we cannot ignore these traumas: “alongside the struggle for justice and as part of it,” she affirms, we need “to bring psychoanalytic understanding to the negotiating table”.
“A new dispensation will involve loosening the knots of the mind in order to create a world in which everyone is granted a due portion.”
This article was originally published by London Review of Books on Thu 30 Nov 2023. Read the original here.
‘You made me do it’ Jacqueline Rose on violence and its origins
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Many thanks for this valuable exploration which I’m about to share right now. In the last week I’ve encountered no less than four disturbing reactions among people I know, and this piece of writing may make conversation possible again. I agree that it is very difficult to sympathise with both sides at once, but there are still SOME wonderful Palestinians and Israelis who can do this out of the depths of their suffering. So we have to try and follow their example.
Such a wonderful, humane article, perfectly articulates what j have been thinking myself ,thank you
I understand the arguments in the article; and I would agree that we should condemn all violence against innocents. However, Freud is a rather dubious mentor for this sort of argument. Neither he nor the article address imperialism; the daily violence visited on oppressed peoples all round the world. The so-called laws of war or of humanitarian conduct have done nothing to halt this. A better guide is found in the writings of Franz Fanon who addresses the relationship between colonialism and racism and the necessity of violence in opposing colonialism.
As I understand it the official position in Israel is to reject the idea of Jews as victims, along with many other aspects of traditional Jewishness. The oppression of Palestinians is presented as a sign of strength, not a response to weakness.
The true picture is not quite so simple. I was recently reading Elie Wiesel’s influential novel about the 6 days war ‘A beggar in Jerusalem’. This is essentially a celebration of slaughter, destruction and conquest, wrapped up inside a victim narrative. The Jew is presented as both triumphant hero and victim. This seems to me to be an aspect of public sentiment in Israel now.
Obviously the idea of the hero/victim goes back further. Hitler appealed to Germans because he authorized them to see themselves simultaneously as Aryan supermen and as innocent victims of the perfidious Treaty of Versailles. He prefaced his attacks on both Czechoslovakia and Poland with complaints about the persecution of German minorities by the Slav majorities.
Undoubtedly Israel has gone further than anyone before in combining the ideas of a war of conquest and an act of self-defence. In Gaza now it presents itself both as victim (because of the events of 7th October) and as hero (because it is winning the war). This position is hard to sustain however in the face of the facts. In seeking to be publicly accepted in both roles it may end up with neither.
The obvious and most desirable outcome for this land would be a equality based multi-cultural society replacing the current ethnocracy. While that may be desirable it is not worth pretending that coloniser and colonised are the same, with equal right to feelings of aggrievement. We’ve had hundreds of years of the slavery and colonialism gravy train and – remember Zionism is a 19th C white colonial project – it usually turns the same way, profitably for those taking the land, and slaughter and marginalisation for those losing it.
And let’s remember this is Apartheid. Before we start attributing parity to those that have experienced violence perhaps we should remember that the nearly 17% of our own citizens who are British Black, Asian and Mixed-Race, would find parts of Israel’s non-tourist areas hazardous. And would even struggle to rent a room in certain towns – even if they were Black-Jewish!
Settlers are prospering from these arrangements.
To very roughly paraphrase Prof Norman Finkelstein, those insensitive youngsters enjoying a music festival within miles of Gaza, were doing the equivalent of having rave next door to a slave plantation. And no that doesn’t make their pain less real but its worth remembering that in a land where resources were shared equally, or even less exploitatively, these things would be a lot less likely to happen.
Yes, I have been thinking the same as Gavin Lewis but not sharing that thought with anybody. There was a theme we used to explore when studying Hamlet, about Ophelia in particular : ‘guilty innocence’.
Firstly, I agree with Gavin Lewis’s comments entirely.
I would also add that much of what Israel claimed what Hamas did on the 7th, has turned out to be lies, ie that babies were mutilated and the Festival goers being gunned down and their cars set fire while they were trying to escape the gunfire. It turned out that an Israeli Helicopter Squadron fired onto the Festival goers and fired some sort of explosive Grenades into the cars. Another group of Israeli Tank soldiers opened fire on Israeli homes, where they suspected that Hamas Soldiers had taken them as prisoners. (Link at the bottom of comment).
I find calling it “A War” very irritating, when French and British Soldiers were fighting the Indian Tribes in America, using riffles and cannons, while the Indians had bow and arrows and lost every battle, was that a War? I say no, there was only ever going to be one outcome and its the same for Palestine and Israel, except, as opposed to Rifles and Cannons, Israel has an Army, Navy and Airforce all fully armed and trained, with the very latest weaponry available. Including HiTec Drones and Missiles that can hit a target within a few feet and they are using them against the Palestinians.
I believe that this massive gap between Israel and Palestine is dampening our emotions of sorrow for Israelis that are killed and this article brought it home to me.
https://www.liberationnews.org/evidence-shows-israel-killed-many-of-its-own-citizens-on-oct-7-then-blamed-hamas/