Find Your Inner Anchor

More than six months into the genocide, on the stolen land of Palestine over 75 years. Details by details, truths are unfolding in front of our eyes. Discussions and analyses revolving around the aspects of history, religions, economics, and politics are widely published across various media outlets. Amongst my circle on social media, I’ve also seen quite a lot of voices about this topic. As I have been quite interested in psychology and sociology lately, I’ll chip in my piece of mind into the discussion from the mental health perspective to look at Israel and Zionism through the lens of Narcissism. Hopefully, this will bring new perspectives in your thinking on this horrific event that’s taking place right now.

After listening to the episode What is a Cult? With Dr. Janja Lalich of the podcast series Navigating Narcissism by Dr. Ramani Durvasula, it got me thinking, are Zionists potentially collectively narcissistic or antagonistic and is Zionism a possibly cult-like belief system?

In the conversation of the podcast, according to the world-renowned expert in cultic studies, Dr. Lalich, a cult is essentially a closed social system, and it has 4 important features:

• The authoritarian, charismatic, or malignant leader (YA KNOW HU)
• A transcendent belief system – Zionism
• System of control – you ought to think and behave a certain way
• System of influence – triangulate power structure & peer pressure

I won’t make any conclusion, but I do see lots of box-ticking here, so I will just leave it for your own interpretation. Then on the narcissistic behavioural patterns, here are some prototype traits and behaviours we could commonly find in a narcissistic unit, whether if it’s a person or an institution:

• Grandiosity – God’s Chosen People (honestly if someone tells me in my face that they are chosen by God, I will be more than amused in a sarcastic way).
• Entitlement – My religious belief is superior to yours, so I am entitled to build a land and nation where everyone else is beneath us. Let’s not forget, last time this kind of ideology occurred, we find them in Nazi Germany and Nazi Japan. 
• Lack of empathy (or performative empathy) – following on above point, even if it means that I must steal the land or home from you or wipe out your existence, I have no problem on doing so.
• Manipulative – when being held accountable, reverse victim, change narrative, and gaslight to twist the reality, i.e. the falsely claimed 40+ beheaded babies,
• Preoccupied with power or success – don’t need to give examples.
• Volcanic insecurity – the sensitiveness to criticism and the fear of being called out making them very reactive when being held accountable, again, no need to give more examples, you see them in your eyes.
• Love bombing – all the propaganda to cover up the lies and holes in their belief system, they must package themselves to the world about how inclusive they are, i.e. the pink washing. Being queer myself, this disgusts me to an unspeakable level.
• DARVO (represents to deny, attack, reverse victim, and offender), developed by psychologist Jennifer Freyd – All the fact denials, attacking when being questioned, self-victimizing and actual victim blaming (Hamas did this and Hamas did that!), everything that Israel has done, fits right into all these traits.

After listing the examples alongside the lens of narcissistic framework, what are your thoughts? I want to point out though, in the world we live in, we tend to glorify the perpetrators and often give so much spotlight to them in any abusive and toxic relationships, but the stories of the abused are left untold or told in a twisted way. Just as how mainstream medias are portraying the picture of the genocide: Israel – right to self-defence; Palestinian – equals to Hamas, or terrorists.  so here in my own forum, I would like to shift the focus to the ones who are being exploited.

There should not be any questions asked that the Palestinian people in Gaza, in the occupied West Bank, and around the world are being affected the most. The 30 000+ lost lives, including more 15 000 children, the lifelong collateral, physical, and emotional damages that they are being subjected to, are completely unbearable to witness, not to mention to experience. Even if some of them may survive if this ever comes to an end, there will be a long way for them to heal after experiencing the genocide.

The Jewish diasporas around the world who are against the apartheid regime of Israel are also affected. Because of Israel’s slaughtering of Palestinian, we are seeing a surging wave of antisemitism around the world, which is so disheartening. They are blamed and threatened by someone else’s wrongdoings under the name of their belief and religion.

At last, I am all for holding perpetrators accountable for their actions. In this case, it’s the Zionist regime and the “flying monkeys” – its complicit enablers of the West, especially US, UK, and Germany (and the irony that Germany has the audacity to decide who are antisemitic, can’t stop rolling my eyes). One day when this has come to an end, we shall not fall for the ingenuine verbal apologies. Only behavioural changes, in this context, policy changes to secure the right of the Palestinian people make it count.

But bear in mind, the Israeli people are also deeply affected. Let’s not forget, in a cult-like system, the strong belief transcendent system, together with the system control and influence, simply cannot allow its followers (the Israelis) to have a choice other than obeying. When someone is deeply “brainwashed”, and they are morally damaged, is the choice they make really a choice? The novel The Reader by German law professor and judge Bernhard Schlink touched upon this topic quite well.

Some of you might have strong reactions on this point but let me demonstrate it from my own experience. As I was born into the communist regime. The entire developmental phase of my life, I was taught and influenced in a certain way, which formed me into believing in the communist ideology for a very long period of time (just as the majority of Chinese people, as well as the Israelis). That’s why I can very much relate to the Israelis to a certain degree, it’s just that I’ve experienced a drastic reconstruction of my own belief system, I am able to reflect on things in the way I could today.

To take one very similar topic in my country as an example, what the Chinese government has done to the Uyghurs (the Muslim minority), basically the same tactics, the reeducation camp, the dehumanisation, the labelling them as the terrorists when in fact they were just resisting against the ethnic cleansing. For you who has been living in the “free world” (which in fact as we can see, only free for a very group of people, the double standard in the West is just so unacceptable), you could quickly acknowledge the wrong in these horrific treatments. But for me, and the majority of the Chinese people, we also had to go through the denial-attack-reverse victim-offender process. I have never personally done anything as horrible as some of the Israelis are doing towards the Palestinians, but can I really say that I have never been a beneficiary of the forced labour and the not so spoken about apartheid in Xinjiang indirectly? How much accountability I should be held for what the government’s doing and my once supporting of these treatments? 

Now I am on the other side, I could tell you that this is no where an easy process for to reconstruct my own belief because I was so wired into it since the day I was born, together with the system control and influence, unlearning really means sacrifices, in my case, moving away from my country and leaving my family behind (psychically and ideologically). The ideological distance is so unbearable that not everyone has the strength and courage to give up on. In some cases, leaving might even mean death.

I recalled a conversation about this topic with a once very important person in my life who led me to my self-exploring journey. He said, “we can’t say that we hate them, hate doesn’t solve problems but only make it worse.” This is so true, while examining their wrongdoings, we should have awareness and critical compassion to ask why the pain and what’s the context for their motives. This is not to give the perpetrators a free pass but to find better answers and solutions.

What’s the solution you may ask? That I don’t know, but what I know one thing for sure is that traumatized people traumatize people, what the European Zionists are doing to Palestinian right now is exactly what the Nazi has done to them, this is such a vicious cycle. We must act collectively to break the generational trauma.

To quote Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, “the arc of moral universe will bend towards justice”. However, learning from the past and the now, it does not bend on its own, it requires a tremendous amount of effort from everyone to push it forward. We all need to do our part to contribute and act anyway we can to bring this to an end before more damages are made.

Whether if it’s starting from having awareness on this issue within yourselves, to talking to a friend or family member to raise awareness amongst more people; from going to protest, to joining the BDS Movement and boycotting businesses that support the genocide (stop buying from Coca Cola, Pepsi, McDonald’s, Starbucks already for fuck’s sake); from donating or volunteering, to pushing your political leaders to act, anyway you can!

“Nobody’s free until everybody’s free” — Fannie Lou Hamer. We’ve been shouting FREE PALESTINE, but in fact, in the movement of freeing Palestine, we are also freeing ourselves.

Disclaimer, due to the limitation within the platform, I will sack myself some slacks on the resources citing part the reflectional article is very inspired by podcasts and books listed below. I welcome everyone to join in the discussion in the comment session but please be mindful of your languages about how it could impact others so think twice before you leave any comments, thank you.

1. Podcast: Navigating Narcissism by Dr. Ramani Durvasula, episode What is a Cult? With Dr. Janja Lalich
2. Podcast: The School of Greatness by Lewis Howes, episode How to End the Cycle of Generational Trauma w/Dr. Gabor Maté
3. It’s Not You: Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People by DR. Ramani Durvasula
4. In the Realm of HUNGRY GHOSTS – Close Encounters with ADDICTION by Dr. Gabor Maté