Israel is continuing its attacks in the Gaza strip for the third day today, striking at a security
compound, a mosque, a university, and a network of smugglers’ tunnels, Israel was apparently reacting to rocket strikes by Hamas forces, but the cycle of violence is all too familiar. Israel reacts with overwhelming force, attempting to squelch the power of the Palestinian military capabilities and restrict the freedom of the Palestinian people to move about the territory. The Palestinian military wing, Hamas in the current situation, reacts with calls for more suicide attacks on civilians in Israel. Israel says there will be no peace talks until attacks by Hamas end, and Israel continues to expand its settlements into Palestinian territories. Meanwhile, rage against Israel and the West in the surrounding Arab nations continues to grow.
Whatever side of this argument you are on, there is no denying that neither side wants peace. They are locked in a battle that has no end – a battle where the lines are blurred between victim and perpetrator.
I’m just finishing an interesting book by Liz Greene entitled
Dark of the Soul: Psychopathology in the Horoscope
There is a chapter on the scapegoat pattern as a psychological complex. In the story of the scapegoat, the ancient Hebrews sent a goat, designated as the carrier of the sins of the collective, into the wilderness to perish and thereby save the collective from punishment. The story of the Christ as the sacrificial lamb who perished for the sins of the collective perhaps comes from the original scapegoat tale. In any case, the scapegoat dynamic depends on the presence of both a victim and the one who represents the collective establishment and inflicts the punishment. Ms. Greene calls that individual the perpetrator.
So with the scapegoat dynamic we have both a perpetrator and a victim, and that dynamic becomes internalized within the individual. Some people suffer terrible abuse and never go on to abuse others, but for some the cycle of victim/perpetrator becomes internalized and the one who is abused becomes the perpetrator him/herself.
I see this quite plainly in the Israeli/Palestinian situation. The modern nation of Israel was established to rescue the victims of the Holocaust, but in order to establish the nation, the fledgling Israeli nation had to fight with the local Arabs in order to expand Israeli territory. Now the victim (Israel) becomes the perpetrator. The Palestinians become the victims, not only of Israeli expansion but also in the refusal of neighboring Arab nations to permit them to enter these countries as refugees. At first, Palestinian violence against Israel was mainly intended to help Palestinians return to their homes, but later as the collective rage against Israel grew, this violence became more generalized. Now the Palestinians are also the perpetrators. At the same time, Israel is portrayed as a victim against the aggression of Lebanon and Iran. So both the Israelis and Palestinians are locked in a cycle of victim/perpetrator that has no end.
Just as the scapegoat for the ancient Hebrews served the purpose of expiating the sins of the collective, the scapegoat psychological complex serves a purpose in a family or a greater collective. Many dysfunctional families contain a scapegoat such as the black sheep, or the bad child, who carries the “sins” of the family so that the rest of the members can feel that they are the ones who are ok. Psychologists who work with troubled families report that when the “bad kid” is removed from the family and put in a hospital or reform school, another child in the family “goes bad.” There must be a goat to carry the sins of the collective, otherwise the collective must face those sins directly and resolve them.
It occurs to me that the unending cycle of violence between the Israelis and the Palestinians provides a scapegoat not only for the nations in the Middle East but for he entire Western world. The astrology of Israel and Palestine, being virtually identical, ensures that the challenging astrological patterns in each chart is forever locked into the other (
see my article for more information on the astrological dynamics of this conflict).
The only way to resolve any destructive psychological pattern is for the individual to recognize that the pattern exists and work with the internal dynamic in a conscious way. In this situation, both Israel and the Palestinians would have to recognize that they have stepped beyond the role of victim to the role of perpetrator, and work to resolve the cycle internally. They cannot rely on the world around them that in a subconscious way depends on the scapegoat to carry out the violence for the collective.
With Pluto in Capricorn, perhaps some of this can be brought to light. The symbol for Capricorn, after all, is the goat.
posted December 29, 2008 at 9:40 am
Getting someone (or some country) that has assumed a victim identity to admit that its become a perpetrator is one heck of a challenge.
posted December 29, 2008 at 11:34 am
Absolutely true, Wellsy. The perpetrator is the shadow side of the victim, and remains in the shadows without the light of a conscious understanding.
posted December 29, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Psychologizing a political and religious struggle in which one side-Hamas- has declared its’ goal is to destroy the other, while the other has made sacrifices for peace on numerous occasions is fatuous. There is no equivalence here and there is no cycle. There is a political mandate for Israel to protect its population against a terrorist group whose stated ambition is genocide. No government can long survive if it does not protect its population.
posted December 29, 2008 at 4:01 pm
I’m finding it difficult to take a political commentary by someone who is naive enough to believe in astrology seriously lol
However I think Israel is definitely guilty of state sponsored terrorism and whilst Hamas is also to blame, Israel’s continued murder and oppression of Palestinian people has to end if there is to be any chance for peace. The more violence Israel commits, the more that the demoralised Palestinians will be likely to look towards the extremists for answers.
posted December 29, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Brilliant post, spot on
posted December 29, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Lynn,
In blaming Israel for the current Gaza war, you left out the fact that for 2 years the Hamas group, which illegaly has taken over the government of Gaza from the PLO, and which the United States has recognized as a terrorist organization, has fired 2000 missiles and rockets into southern Israel. There was no provocation for this; Israel left the Gaza Strip years ago to separate itself from Palestinians there, but as soon as they left the rockets started; they are aimed at civiian areas, particularly schools and are timed for when children finish their classes. Your comments re very onesided and reflect a lack of knowledge of the history of the Midle East…a story too common among bloggers.
posted December 29, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Saiam das terras palestinas e parem de matar inocentes.
Israel troca política por vidas.
Israel stop die!!
Israel all for money!!
No more die!!
posted December 29, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Steve, what sacrifices for peace has Israel made? You spout a good line but you don’t provide examples.
Gerald, there is evidence that unfired rockets aimed at Israel were placed there by the Israelis. See the link.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0608/06/rs.01.html
Here’s a snip:
“And joining us now here Washington Anne Compton who covers the White House for ABC News, and Thomas Ricks, Pentagon reporter for “The Washington Post” and author of the new book “Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq.”
Tom Ricks, you’ve covered a number of military conflicts, including Iraq, as I just mentioned. Is civilian casualties increasingly going to be a major media issue? In conflicts where you don’t have two standing armies shooting at each other? THOMAS RICKS, REPORTER, “THE WASHINGTON POST”: I think it will be. But I think civilian casualties are also part of the battlefield play for both sides here. One of the things that is going on, according to some U.S. military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they’re being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon.
KURTZ: Hold on, you’re suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hezbollah to retain some of it’s fire power, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here?
RICKS: Yes, that’s what military analysts have told me.
KURTZ: That’s an extraordinary testament to the notion that having people on your own side killed actually works to your benefit in that nobody wants to see your own citizens killed but it works to your benefit in terms of the battle of perceptions here.
RICKS: Exactly. It helps you with the moral high ground problem, because you know your operations in Lebanon are going to be killing civilians as well.”
posted December 29, 2008 at 7:03 pm
There’s irony in the possibility that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is more controversial than any. Certainly harder to talk about. I admire your courage, Lynn.
Easy for westerners to be philosophical, but I want to believe there’s a possible solution even when the animosities run as deep as those along the Gaza. So I tend to believe in the transformative power of great leadership. Great leaders will surface, and change the minds of whole generations. They’ve been missing for a while, but they will come.
posted December 29, 2008 at 7:09 pm
In writing this post I intended to be politically neutral but simply to point out the underlying psychological dynamic of this endless conflict. I am blaming neither Israel nor the Palestinians, although I can find plenty of fault on both sides. The interesting thing to me is how two victimized groups have become locked in this cycle of victim/perpetrator and what the world at large has to gain as a result.
posted December 29, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Kieron, this quote that you cite indicates that Israeli forces may have intentionally left Hezbollah with a supply of their own rockets to equalize the forces, not that Israel planted them there. But in any case, and putting aside for the moment the severity of the Israeli response rather than the attacks by Hamas, what do you think Hamas thinks it will accomplish by continuing to shoot rockets into Israel? Does it really think that it can generate enough sympathy to escalate a war there?
posted December 29, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Modern psycotherapy calss this phenonam “The Triangle of Abuse”
posted December 30, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Gerald – GREAT points! I agree with what you posted.
posted December 30, 2008 at 2:11 pm
It’s impossible to look at the ongoing conflict without being desperately sorry for the women and children and other innocent civilians who have been killed or people who can’t go to work or get food and medicine because of blockades or who have had their houses destroyed by Israel because they have terrorist relatives.
On the flip side, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for Hamas or for radicals who pressure naive young people (and in some cases mentally handicapped young people) to become suicide bombers and teach hateful propaganda through cartoons to their preschoolers. They plant weaponry in civilian households and then point at Israel when Israel bombs those houses and there are civilian casualties. There is a great deal I don’t like about the most radical elements of radical Islam, including the treatment of women, the “honor” killings you hear about from time to time. The first memory I have of hearing about the Palestinians is about terrorists hijacking a plane way back in the 1970s or 1980s. All in all, I would prefer that Israel remain a strong presence in the Middle East because its culture is more likely to give people a chance of living in something resembling freedom and prosperity, provided the Palestinians stop firing rockets at them, elects a government interested in building a good life for all its people, and recognizes Israel’s right to exist and Israel agrees to a peace treaty that will give Palestinians a fair deal. It’s certainly not fair that Palestinians have been living for so very long in an armed camp.
It is interesting that the two groups of people are so similar genetically and linguistically.
posted December 30, 2008 at 9:50 pm
I find myself reacting to this latest foofarah like a weary parent. I haven’t written about it on my own blog because my feeling right now is ‘I DON’T CARE WHO STARTED IT. JUST KNOCK IT OFF!!’
posted December 31, 2008 at 5:17 pm
It is interesting that the two groups of people are so similar genetically and linguistically
and astrologically!
posted January 1, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Thank you Liz Greene for this great article. Addressing the larger picture and the issues within it.
I really like what I am hearing from the young ones these days.
http://december18th.org/ (check video) They really do get it.
The key seems to be the recognition of the pattern and then the desire to remove ones self from either side toward a higher understanding. I have a saying, “Victims Victimize” after having seen it from within myself and others. A change in humanity will require an understanding of the dynamics that we DO create our own world. We are powerful spiritual beings having a human experience.
It seems to take more than just the victim standing up to the perpetrator. It also requires a DESIRE and VISION of a better way, then willingness to take correct action. These children taking a stand that requires little more than common sense is refreshing.
I believe these young people sense the larger forces at work in our world that desire to profit from war and are standing up to that. An unfunded Israel and would have to behave itself much better.
Anyway we are here in this 3dimensional plane of existence to learn this and then be it. >
posted April 22, 2009 at 12:19 am
I can’t believe how full of sh– you are writing out and out lies about Israel and the Jewish people. They NEVER had to fight arabs to ‘expand their territory’ as you put it; There were 100,000 Jews already living in ‘lower Syria’ – the official Ottoman empire name of the area for 800 years – THERE NEVER WAS A PALESTINIAN NATION. The Jews from around the world PURCHASED LAND – FROM THE OTTOMAN MUSLIM ABSENTEE LAND OWNERS IN SOUTHERN SYRIA, (THEIR OWN LAND THAT THEY WERE EXILED FROM FOR NEARLY 2000 YEARS). THIS LAND WAS UNOFFICIALLY NOW KNOWN AS ‘PALESTINE’, A PROVINCE OF TURKEY, WHERE MOST OF THE LANDOWNERS LIVED. THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF ACRES OF LAND WERE PURCHASED BY THE JEWS FROM THESE ABSENTEE LANDOWNERS – AT STEEPLY OVERBLOWN RATES. SAND DUNES, SWAMPS; THE JEWS NEVER STOLE LAND FROM ANYBODY!! THEY DRAINED SWAMPS AND MADE THE DESSERT BLOOM WITH IRRIGATION AND HYDROPONIC GARDENS THAT THEY THEMSELVES DEVELOPED. THEY BUILT SCHOOLS AND HOSPITALS FOR THEMSELVES AND EVEN FOR THE LOCAL ARAB NEIGHBORS. HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF ARAB MUSLIMS CAME POURING IN FROM EVERY SURROUNDING ARAB AREA FOR JOBS, FOR OPPORTUNITIES – OVERFLOWING THE NEW BRITISH PROTECTORATE PROVINCE OF ‘PALESTINE’, THE NAME DERIVED FROM THE ROMAN INSULT TO THE JEWISH PEOPLE – RENAMING THEIR LAND PALESTINE, TWO THOUSAND YEARS EARLIER. ALL THIS HAPPENED AFTER WW1. READ YOUR HISTORY AND GET IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME!