Gaza’s Culture of Self-Destruction
The situation in Gaza is, indeed, “grim and miserable,” as the UN’s Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, John Holmes, noted the other day. Certainly, the Palestinians living in Gaza are struggling under severe economic conditions. There is no doubt that sanctions levied against Gaza inflict hardship and deprivation on the citizens of Gaza. These sanctions include closed borders with both Israel and Egypt, reductions in electrical power and fuel deliveries, and deliveries of food supplies that keep them short of a humanitarian crisis but, by no means, allow for comfortable existence. Yet, it is not the current deplorable economic conditions, the border blockade, nor the effects of the other sanctions that make the situation in Gaza so grim and miserable. These, after all, are recent and temporary measures, creating a temporary state of hardship. No, what makes the situation in Gaza so grim is far more insidious.
It is something that will remain to plague the citizens of Gaza long after memories have faded of the months spent eating a bland diet of staples, of the inability to purchase flat-screen televisions or to spend vacations in the Sinai. It is the very culture that the Palestinians in Gaza have spent so many years carefully crafting that makes their present — and their long-term future — both grim and miserable.
The people in Gaza need to stop and take a good look at the culture and society that they are creating and begin to think hard about how they might begin to undo the damage to their social fabric that is, with every day that passes, increasing. They should begin their social re-engineering not for the sake of their Israeli enemies across the border, nor to increase their standing on the world stage, but rather for their own sakes because inculcating blind hatred, with a murderous twist, against another group has some unintended side effects for the culture that does the inculcating.
When children are raised on a steady diet of hatred, disrespect for human life, and violence, those children grow up to be violent and with no regard for the life, or well-being, of others. And not just for “those” others but for all others, including those within their own society. Parents in Gaza need to ask themselves, “What kind of person will my child grow up to be if I have taught him to celebrate the murder of a 73 year old woman by passing out candy and flowers?” as the children of Gaza did in large numbers recently when two suicide bombers managed to kill an old woman and put her even more elderly husband into intensive care.
In most countries, parents worry about what effects watching violent television will have on their children. They worry over whether they are effectively instilling values such as kindness, decency, and respect in their children so that they can grow up into productive and decent members of their societies. Most people recognize that the values instilled in childhood have lifelong implications not only for the child in question but also for the society in which he will live. Do the parents in Gaza not worry about the shape their future society will take when today’s children are being taught that the lives of other children have no value and, indeed, that those other children should be killed, as is frequently told to the children of Gaza through their children’s television programming? Do they not worry about the kind of adults they are producing when, as children, their society and the parents themselves have told them that their own lives have no value? What future accomplishments will their society attain when their children have been taught that the greatest thing they can do with their lives is to kill themselves in the process of killing others -that there is no greater accomplishment that they can achieve than to blow themselves up among groups of old women and children? What will be the face of a society in which the children have been raised to admire violence and to consider the use of a deadly weapon as a first resort in a conflict?
Imagine for a moment what Palestinian society is going to look like when the day comes when those “others” their children are taught to so hate are no longer the enemy to be vanquished. Because children in Gaza are not taught to consider peace with their enemy to be an option, consider instead a scenario in which the conflict ends with the stated goals of Hamas: they have managed to kill every Jewish man, woman, and child living in the Zionist country and returned the land to Muslim and Arab rule. Indeed, this is not only the goal of Hamas but also the desire of many average citizens in Gaza, as was made clear by the comments of a simple taxi driver in the wake of the most recent suicide bombing in Dimona, “In the name of Allah, may all of the attacks be like this. That we will exterminate the Israelis. It will be easier for us. We will reach the South, Tel-Aviv and the heart of Israel.”
Thus, envisage, if you will, that there are no more Jews and no more Jewish State. The people of Gaza have thrown the mother of all parties in celebration, they’ve danced in the streets, fired their weapons in jubilation, consumed large amounts of sweets, children have passed out flowers on every street corner — and then what? Do the citizens of Gaza think that the violence, hatred and disregard for human life, for their own lives, that they’ve worked so hard to instill in their children is simply going to disappear along with the Israelis they’ve managed to exterminate? Do they think that these children, now grown, are going to suddenly unlearn violence?
Research in sociology and social psychology has long shown that once there is no longer an external enemy to focus on, those same violent tendencies and expressions used against the enemy will bloom within a society. Violence will erupt and it will be neighbor against neighbor, family member against family member, clan against clan. The people of Gaza will be shocked, “How could this young man do such a thing to a member of his own people?” He can, and he will, because he has been taught that human life has no value, that his own life has no value, and that killing someone is a first resort. The new enemy will be other Palestinians.
If you think I am wrong, remember how Gazan treated Gazan during the Hamas coup. Remember how attacks against members of Fatah resulted in headlining stories such as “Among yesterday’s dead was a 14-year-old boy and three women, all killed in a Hamas attack on a Fatah security officer’s home.” Remember the words of a Gaza citizen, minutes before he was dragged out into the street and killed,
“They’re firing at us, firing RPGs, firing mortars. We’re not Jews,” the brother of Jamal Abu Jediyan, a Fatah commander, pleaded during a live telephone conversation with a Palestinian radio station.
Far from being “collateral damage” — that is, women and children killed by accident in the attempt to kill an armed fighter — women and children within Palestinian society can and will become the targets to be murdered by other members of their society. Recall the three little children — Palestinian children, not those “worthy of death” Jewish children -who were gunned down on their way to school as a message to their father:
Balousheh’s three children — 3-year-old Salam, 6-year-old Ahmed and 9-year-old Osama — were in the family car on their way to school when gunmen opened fire from two vehicles. The three were killed along with their driver. Doctors said one of the boys was hit by 10 bullets to the head.
It has already happened and the “real” enemy was still just across the border. It happened despite the fact that whenever a group has an external enemy to focus on they experience far greater social cohesion within their own group, far less violence and crime within their own society. When that external enemy is removed, crime and violence blossom within — this occurs in normal societies where children are not raised on a daily doctrine of violence against others. It occurs when the society does not worship death and destruction and in cultures where they do not pass out candy and flowers in celebration of the murder of a helpless old woman — so imagine for a moment what Palestinian society will look like should they get their wish.
Indeed, whether Israeli society is destroyed or a peace agreement is reached, the perhaps distant day will come when the conflict is at an end and the violence currently directed outward will come home to the people of Gaza. Yes, the situation in Gaza is grim and miserable, indeed, but the future they are creating for themselves is even more so.
Dr. Yael Kaynan is a Senior Lecturer in the Departments of Communication and Psychology at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya and the Communications Department at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She blogs at Step By Step: Making a Life in Israel and founded Good Neighbors a group blog with contributors from around the Middle East
“…when children are taught that there is no greater accomplishment than blowing themselves up?”
That says it all right there, doesn’t it?
Any way you look at it, Islam is NOT the “religion of peace,” and with the world watching, there’s less and less sympathy and understanding.
Well said, but the question is how to get out of this spiral. It will not be easy.
For years many of us have been frantically warning our fellow Westerners about the irredeemable horribleness of Islam, and only now does it seem as if people are accepting this fact. But our warning isn’t limited to the fact that viciousness, hatred, and terrorism suffuse all Islamic societies, or that these nightmares are intrinsic within Islam itself. We are also warning our fellow Westerners that Islam and the presence of millions of Muslims on our soil pose a genuine threat to our existence.
There is an implication in the article above that the suffering of Muslims under Islam will somehow ultimately be their undoing, but where is the corroboration for this thesis? Muslims have been pillaging, terrorizing, murdering and slaughtering ever since Islam’s inception. Muslims have gobbled up vast tracts of land and enslaved over a billion under their hideous system — to many Westerners they look like complete losers who cannot possibly pose a genuine threat, or possibly succeed in destroying us. But what many perceive as failure across the spectrum in all Muslim strongholds is Islam’s enduring triumph.
Islam is today triumphant in Gaza. It is triumphant in Iran. Islam is thriving in hell holes as diverse as Indonesia, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, etc. Newly invigorated with trillions upon trillions of petrodollars, with gains across the board in Turkey, Pakistan, Algeria and London, Muslims are more animated by Jihadi fervor than perhaps ever before in history.
It is not sufficient to look upon the Islamic world and comfort ourselves with delusions that Islam is failing there. It is succeeding beyond the wildest dreams of the Muslims themselves. Imagining that the punishments and suffering they visit upon themselves will somehow prevent them from visiting those punishments in turn upon us is a grave self delusion.
Muslims and Islam must be stopped. The “failure” of Gaza, or the obvious failures of Islam at large are no protection whatsoever from Islam itself and its nightmarishly destructive forces. Chaos is Islam’s friend. Hatred and terror are Islam’s weapons. Destruction and plunder are Islam’s trajectory, and we are squarely in their crosshairs.
Morton,
The faster the US gets out from under the dependence on Saudi oil, the faster we contribute to the eventual decline of radical Islam power. When thought about, what else do the Islam-centric nations contribute to the world other than having been lucky to be sitting on the worlds oil supply? Not much.
Would Americans/Oil dependant corps./environmentalists really want to hear the word “sacrifice,” in the name of national security to the tune of spending a little more for alternatives to home-heating oil, fast-tracking into non-oil alternative industries, drilling in alaska as a posibility, et al? Oh I can hear the screams now, not to mention the collective hysteria of lobbists.
It seems that we do know all the consequences of keeping oil-rich Islam drowning in American dollars, yet are either too impatient or too selfish to do what it REALLY takes as a nation to REALLY fight radical Islam. And to that end, it’s left to our poor American soldiers to do what we won’t.
The Palestininans have all the appearances of a people bent on collective suicide. Perhaps we should get out of the way and let them succeed.
Neo-Neocon posted an article in September 2005 about Gaza by “Martha Gellhorn which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in October of 1961, forty-four years ago. ” The article shows that while the problem may be more extreme today, social pathology was already in Gaza well before the Israel’s taking over Gaza during the Six Day War in 1967.
Killing Jews is not the means towards the satisfaction of Palestinian nationalist aspirations in the form of a Palestinian Arab State. Palestinian nationalism is the means towards the desired end of the Palestinian Arabs, killing all the Jews.
If, God forbid, the Palestinian Arabs and their owners in Iran or Saudi Arabia should ever succeed in the destruction of Israel and the genocide of its Jewish inhabitants, I don’t think anyone has to worry about what the character of Palestinian Arab society afterwards will be. There will be none.
The destruction of Israel will set off an intra-Arab war, one that will probably suck in non-Arab countries like Iran and Turkey as well. Every Arab country in the vicinity will want the swag, and want to prevent others from taking their share. Since Arab wars primarily are characterized by competitive slaughter of civilians, by the time the various Arab states get done there will be no more Palestinians. They will all be dead or fled, and since they will no longer be opposed to Jews nobody will care what happens to the survivors.
Palestinian nationalism exists only as a distorted mirror image of Zionism, and if the latter is destroyed the former will die too. Palestinian nationalism is a perfect example of the doctrine of evil being unable to be creative.
It isn’t so much when the enemy is gone that the self-destructive pathology arises. Its also when the group are defeated, stalemated, or unable to credibly continue the fight.
Shooting ‘spies’, internal power politics as proxy for the real battle; all that shameful ‘othering’ gets transferred to internal opponents.
You can see it all happen in a church split, and its aftermath too. How nice that it doesn’t have to involve rocket launchers.
Go to Yael Kaynan’s website – http://olehgirl.com/
She is a self-described “Socialist Zionist.” That puts her in sync with the assimilationist leftists who have been trying to ruin and de-Judaize the country since its founding – and who are now approaching success.
Who is this article aimed at?
The Hamas leadership? Do they care that they are ruling over a violent and sick society? Are they going to change their ways because some psychologist tells them their people will be unhappy and violent even if they get their wishes?
Israel and the West? What can anyone in the West do? Send them Prozac? Perhaps get some UN psychiatrists to help them talk out their problems?
This is Arafat’s legacy. His plan was to make it impossible for Pal society to ever compromise with Israel. Pal society has been radicalized and they will never accept what Israel can offer them. They will always demand more. The Jihadi “motto” is Victory or Death. That’s their basic plan. Compromise, mercy, non-violence never enter into it.
Just because this society acts in what appears to a Western audience to be sick and violent doesn’t mean that it is. The basis of the Pal society is different than ours in the West. Take a look at all the Arab societies. Look at Iraq under Sadaam. Pal society seems to be par for the course.
On the good side of this messy and ugly thing, we must remember that evolution is based on selection.
The habitat will select for a part of them. Who will be selected for?
The killers? The peace lovers? The weaks? The strong?
How much the selected for will be able to adapt for the external competition? Jews, beduins, Egyptians, others.
It is my impression the Palestinians are working hard to make themselves in a position where someone else will enter and disperse them to the four winds with ease.
I don’t know how well are the utilities of Gaza (water, power, security) maintained. And, for sure, they are dependent from abroad for so much. Then a good plan is to reduce slowly the amount they are able to produce themselves or obtain from abroad. Then, they will be forced to leave, a few at time, and be unable to grow in number inside.
What can anyone in the West do?
We could quit aiding and abetting the terrorists. We could quit rewarding murder and mayhem. We could quit pretending that both sides have equal peaceful visions of the future that only differ at the margins. We could actually be a broker for peace.
But, recognizing the State Department for what it is, we should just get started on the next “Never Again” Resolution and include a signing statement that says “we really, really, really, really mean it this time!”.
I agree completely with Dr. Keynan’s thesis and conclusions. But I would submit that there’s an easier way to explain it.
Quite simply, you get more of what you encourage, and less of what you discourage; that’s elementary human behavior. If a child gets what she wants every time she throws a tantrum, she will conclude that throwing tantrums works, and she will continue happily to do what gets results.
Similarly, the Palestinians have, for years, seen EVERY perceived gain, large or small, as being a victory for terror. (This applies to Israel’s unilateral withdrawals from Gaza, from Lebanon, and from Joseph’s Tomb, for example, but minor negotiating advantages have also been seen as the direct result of terror.)
In that context, what incentive have the Palestinians to EVER abandon terror? If they lose, they must increase their efforts to destroy the Zionist enemy; if they win, their victory is thanks to terror, so obviously this winning tactic must be continued. It’s a “heads-I-win, tails-you-lose” situation.
Even worse, the Palestinians have painted themselves into a corner — and getting themselves out of it will be difficult, if not impossible, without outside help. Imagine a Palestinian reformer, who is committed to non-violence, but is in every other way determined to achieve the goal of an independent Palestinian state? (Call him Mahmoud Gandhi, if you like.) He would be seen as an obstacle to the glorious violent struggle, denounced as a collaborator, and assassinated immediately; Hamas and Fatah might even collaborate to get the job done. (This has happened before. Think about how extreme a Palestinian must be even to be considered a “moderate”… and allowed to survive.)
So an end to terror can only come from without. But the Palestinians do not want to be controlled from without, and, given the unending rhetoric about the hated “occupation”, it would be political suicide for any Western power to attempt it.
In fact, getting back to the idea of using methods that have been proven to work — can the Palestinians learn to be peaceful neighbors? Or will nothing less than the methods of September 1970 suffice to pacify them? (Historically, that’s the only example I can think of in which a violent Palestinian population was pacified… and it’s called “Black September” to this day.)
If the Palestinians continue to close off every avenue EXCEPT that one, then that is what they can expect. As John Kennedy once said: “those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable”.
There are no easy answers here. I wish it were otherwise.
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
This kind of self destruction might just be what the progressive leadership really wants. We could be treated to the sight every night on tv of Palastinians killing each other in the name of islam. With no one to blame but themselves. This alone would make them seem less like human beings and more like animals.
Once our leadership have let this image of muslims set in peoples minds, how hard would it be to just announce after some outrage that
muslims must be removed ie killed, exterminated pick your own word.There wouldn’t even have to be any guilt, because our leaders could point to all the things we have done over the years and say “Look we tried and this is the only choice left.” How many people would really get worked up over it.
The really ironic part is that the muslim world would have put this image on themselves without any overt propaganda by the West.
Karama has a nasty, nasty sense of humor.
What the Palestinians have done to their children is not reversible. A constant indoctrination in hate and celebration of genocide from the earliest days of their education guarantees a terrorist society in perpetuity.
It is past time to cut off power, water, and all forms of “humanitarian” aid to the Palestinians.
There is no need to feed your mortal enemies.
If the Palestinians killed ever Jewish person on the face of the earth tomorrow, the day after they would still be screaming that they are victims, they would still be shooting rockets at civilians, they would still be killing anyone they could get in their sights. They will turn on the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Syrians or the Lebanese.
The Palestinians are doomed for eternity. They have turned themselves into social lepers than nobody wants.
Fear not, the Obamessiah will cure all that ails the world. The Islamic culture is worthless and incompatible with any other culture other than pre-fire man. Islamic Muslims are liars, cheats and murdering rapists, and these are their endearing qualities. Iran is going to get the game started, will we be ready to play?
The dictionary defines culture as “refined enlightenment”. There is nothing refined or enlightened in the Palestinian society.
Without a doubt. The only mistake this article makes is that the Palestinians prefer peace to violence, that in spite of what they teach their children, they value human life.
I have no problem calling the Palestinians an evil people. They hold human life in contempt – their own, and everyone else’s. If that’s not evil, what is?
What would they do if Israel wasn’t there anymore?
Silly boy, Israel is the Lesser Satan. The US is the Greater Satan. They won’t fall into themselves. They will have work to do.
I’m a sober alcoholic, and the Palestinians remind me of my drinking days: blaming everything on everybody else, thinking an action solved my problems that actually caused my problems, denial, self-centeredness, anger, stubbornness, resentment, etc.
An alcoholic has the individual choice to change, difficult though it is. I have no idea what kind of choices a culture has. But nothing outside of an alcoholic can ‘cure’ him, and I don’t see that any outside force can help the Palestinians. I see no desire to change… Practicing alcoholics generally die young…
So I guess the tragedy has to play itself out, causing pain and horror to all involved, not least the Palestinians themselves. Thinking of all their own creativeness and potential for good that they are throwing away is sickening.